


Succubus Flu

by cdybedahl



Category: Chuck (TV), Fringe, Lost Girl
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-27
Updated: 2011-02-27
Packaged: 2017-10-15 23:51:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/166173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cdybedahl/pseuds/cdybedahl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bo has fallen ill. Sarah Walker comes looking for an agent who Bo accidentally ate. And said agent's dead body ends up on the autopsy table of one Walter Bishop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Succubus Flu

**Author's Note:**

> While I have chosen not to mark this as "non-con", it does involve Bo's succubus powers being used. If that is too dodgy consent-wise for your tastes, avoid this fic.

“I’m still not talking to you,” Kenzi said as soon as she heard someone pick up her call. “Just so you know.”  
She was standing in hers and Bo’s living room. She looked tired and worn, her hair in disarray and her clothes none too fresh.  
There was a brief silence from the other end of the phone.  
“You called to tell me that?” Lauren said.  
“No,” Kenzi said. “I just want you to know that the fact that I’m calling you doesn’t mean that I’m talking to you.”  
“All right,” Lauren said, again with a little pause. “So why are you calling me?”  
Kenzi bit her lower lip and looked over at the worn couch in the middle of the room. A curvy dark-haired woman was lying on it. She was covered by several blankets, and her face shone with sweat. She was moaning and twitching in her sleep.  
“I… I think there’s something wrong with Bo,” Kenzi said. “She’s got a fever. A really high fever.”  
“So why aren’t you calling Dyson?”  
There was a clear note of bitterness in Lauren’s voice.  
“She’s not talking to him either,” Kenzi said. “Anyway, she shagged someone last night, and it didn’t help. Also, she couldn’t concentrate because of the fever, so said someone ended up a bit dead.”  
She could almost hear Lauren frown through the telephone.  
“Bo drained someone’s life, and she didn’t heal?”  
“No,” Kenzi said. “In fact, I think she got worse.”  
“How is she now?”  
“Sleeping,” Kenzi said. “Burning hot. In, you know, the temperature sense.”  
“Can you get her over here?”  
“I don’t think so,” Kenzi said. “Also, I don’t think she’d want to.”  
Lauren sighed.  
“No, I guess she wouldn’t,” she said. “And me coming over probably wouldn’t be any better.”  
“Well, you can come over,” Kenzi said. “I mean, if you think it’s serious and that it’d help.”  
“Let’s call it plan B,” Lauren said. “If I have some equipment couriered over to your place, can you draw a blood sample from her and send it back to me?”  
“Oh, sure,” Kenzi said. “No problem.”  
“Are you sure? It takes a bit of practice.”  
“I’m sure,” Kenzi said. “Don’t ask.”  
"All right," Lauren said. "Hang on a moment while I get the stuff on its way. I have a few questions."  
"Sure," Kenzi said.  
She sat down on the nearest solid object, looking at Bo. Even though she tried to hide it even from herself, she was scared. Meeting the succubus had been by far the best thing that ever happened to her, and the thought of losing her again sent a wave of panic through Kenzi. Her life had been a constant scramble from one temporary shelter to another, living off petty theft and minor cons. It was a small miracle that she’d been able to stay away from all the various kinds of exploiting men for as long as she had, and a not so small miracle that Bo showed up right when she did. For the first time since she ran away from home, Kenzi had a bed that was her own and a place that she could honestly call home.  
If Bo died, all that would go away. On top of which, she’d lose the most amazing person she’d ever known. Which was a major part of the panic. A habitual loner and self-sufficient survivor, it was only with the greatest reluctance that Kenzi admitted to herself that she’d come to rely on Bo. Her super-powered, cool, gorgeous elder sister, in a way.  
Although, if she was honest with herself, her feelings had grown somewhat less sisterly over time. Yes, sure, at the beginning she’d made sure to be very clear that she had no interest in Bo in that way. But that had been mostly half-reflex self-defense, setting up barriers against someone stronger who might want to take advantage. How someone reacted to that sort of thing said a lot about them. Bo had just accepted it. No questions, no prodding, no testing. Just taken Kenzi’s word as spoken. She wasn’t used to that. Wasn’t used to being treated as a valuable human being while she was just being herself, not pretending to be someone else. Bo’s trust and acceptance had eroded Kenzi’s protective walls without her even noticing, until one day her subconscious suddenly informed her in no uncertain terms that Bo was insanely gorgeous and she wouldn’t mind at all having a taste of that. Which was all kinds of wrong and problematic, what with Lauren and Dyson and the feeding on sex and herself not being into women. Unless they had supernatural powers of seduction, apparently. Which sort of made sense.  
“Fuck,” Kenzi summed up the situation to herself.  
“Are you there?” Lauren said in the phone.  
Ok, one thing at a time. Right now, fix Bo.  
“Yeah,” Kenzi said. “Shoot.”  
“I need to know what happened. When did she start feeling ill, had you done anything special, met someone, things like that.”  
“Nothing strange,” Kenzi said. “We went to the Dál Riata last night for a few beers, and we got to talking with this chick. It was maybe ten o’clock when Bo said she was feeling peckish. The three of us decided to go to some night club so Bo could snack on someone all discreet-like. Only by the time we got there she was feeling kinda iffy, and when she tried feeding a little on the new chick she lost control. And it also turned out that the new girl wasn’t actually Fae, so she ended up sort of not alive. Bo was pretty weak and confused afterward, so we just dragged the corpse into a nearby alley before we went home. She fell asleep on the couch. She’s still there. She’s all sweaty and pale and has a way higher temperature than can be good.”  
“No unusual food or drink?”  
“Nope. Well, that girl. Maybe she was some kind of weird Fae who’s poison to succubuses.”  
“Any other symptoms than weakness and fever?”  
“She seemed kinda confused, but I think that was the fever.”  
“Ok,” Lauren said. “When did you last eat or sleep?”  
Kenzi was confused for a moment.  
“Me? Er, slept yesterday and ate something at Trick’s last night, I guess. Why?”  
“Because you won’t be any help to Bo if you collapse,” Lauren said. “As soon as you’ve taken the blood sample and sent it back to me, you get something to eat and then go rest. It’ll be some hours while I analyze her blood. I’ll let you know when I have something.”  
“What if she gets worse while I sleep?”  
“I don’t think that’s very likely, but if you sleep next to the couch any drastic change will probably wake you up.”  
Kenzi nodded.  
“Ok,” she said. “I’ll do that.”  
“Talk to you later.”  
She walked over to the couch and sat down next to it.  
“We’ll fix you up, ok?” she said. “Lauren and me. And anyone else we need. You just take it easy.”  
It made her feel a little better, just saying it. She settled down to wait for Lauren’s courier.

Agent Olivia Dunham walked through the door to the basement lab. It was way too early in the morning to be working, but over the years she’d gotten used to having no regular hours. As had her team, as evidenced by all three of them already being there and working.  
“So,” she said, “what have we got?”  
Walter looked up from the corpse he was investigating.  
“Ah, Agent Dunham!” he said. “We appear to have what you have often wished for. A happy ending!”  
Olivia looked at the body on the examination table. It was female, apparently about mid-twenties and notably attractive. She was naked, with no immediately visible wounds. Her nails had been cut short, and her pubic hair neatly shaved. And her face was fixed in a vastly exaggerated smile. Walter was sticking an instrument of some kind into her ear.  
“She’s dead,” Olivia said. “How is that a happy ending?”  
“He thinks he’s being funny,” Peter said. He was sitting on the edge of a table, his feet on the chair in front of it.  
“Apparently she orgasmed to death,” Astrid said. She was standing next to Walter, ready to hand him instruments and tools on demand.  
“You can do that?” Olivia asked.  
“No,” Walter said, still looking into his instrument. “You can’t.”  
“Which is why she’s with us rather than in a normal hospital morgue,” Peter added.  
“No, that was just because of the look on her face,” Walter said. “Apparently the paramedics on the scene found it sufficiently strange that they told the police, who told the FBI.”  
Olivia dropped her coat on a nearby chair.  
“Ok,” she said. “Give me the story.”  
She stood looking at the dead woman, trying to take in all the details. Trying to see the unusual, the revealing little things that might break open the case.  
Astrid picked up a clipboard.  
“She was found at 2AM this morning. Persons unknown saw her lying in an alley and made an anonymous call to 911. A police patrol got there, called an ambulance. The paramedics, as Walter said, found it weird.”  
“Was she naked at the time?”  
Astrid shook her head.  
“Her clothes are on the table over there. But no purse, wallet or anything else that tells us who she was.”  
She indicated a pretty small pile of things nearby. Olivia grabbed a couple of latex gloves and went to have a look.  
“So what did she actually die of?” she asked as she started rummaging through the clothes.  
“Acute dopamine deficiency in the Nucleus accumbens,” Walter said. “Also, significant neuron death in other areas of the limbic system. Which, as Aster said, looks like what might happen if an orgasm kept going for far longer than it can actually do.”  
Olivia shook her head.  
“Orgasmed to death,” she said. “Well, that explains the look on her face, I guess. Also, these are party clothes.”  
“There are six night clubs within three blocks of where she was found,” Astrid said.  
“Did you check for stamps on her hands or something in her stuff that tells us which one she was at?”  
“Yes,” Astrid said. “No luck.”  
“Does she have calluses on her fingers?”  
Astrid checked. “No. Why?”  
“Are any of those six clubs gay clubs?”  
It looked like Astrid was about to say something, then changed her mind.  
“I’ll check,” she said.  
Peter looked at Olivia.  
“You think she was gay?” he said.  
Olivia shrugged.  
“The nails,” she said. “She kept them short and neat. That’s common if you expect to get intimate with the ladies. Or if you play the harp, but that leaves calluses.”  
“I think she’d been kissing someone,” Walter said. Olivia and Peter turned to look at him. He was holding a strip of paper up to a light and looking at it through a magnifying glass.  
“Two different shades of lipstick on her lips,” he said. “One in traces. It could have got there in a variety of ways, of course. Badly washed glass, for example. Some of those places have horrible hygienic standards. Night clubs in general, I mean. Not specifically gay ones. I don’t know much about those, actually. Never really had the time…”  
“OH-KAY!” Peter said, interrupting him. “So we think she was into women.”  
“And one of the clubs is a gay club,” Astrid said, returning from her sejour at the computer. “A lesbian club, even.”  
Olivia smiled.  
“I think Astrid and I will have to go ask the questions this time,” she said.

The black van with the tinted windows drew up and parked across the street from the club. Nobody got out.  
“I don’t like this,” Morgan said. He was sitting in the driver’s seat of the van, his hands still on the steering wheel.  
“Chuck’ll be fine,” Sarah said. She was in the passenger seat next to him. “Casey’s there to keep an eye on things.”  
Morgan laughed a little and tilted his head.  
“Well, yeah, Casey,” he said. “You see, as magnificent as our dear Casey is in a physical sense, he really isn’t that good with the touchy-feely stuff, you know? And that’s what Chuck needs right now! He’s being tested by the CIA. His entire spy future is at stake! He’ll be nervous, and I won’t be there to help him get over it. Yeah, sure, if some bad guys charge in and try to kill him, Casey’ll be all over it. Happy about it, probably. But…”  
“Morgan!”  
He fell silent.  
“Sorry,” he said. “I just worry, ok?”  
“Chuck will be fine,” Sarah said. “He’s just going through some simple tests. There’s nothing to worry about.”  
“I know. I do anyway. I know, I’m a wimp.”  
Sarah put her hand on Morgan’s.  
“You’re a kind and caring friend,” she said. “You should be proud of that.”  
He looked away.  
“But,” Sarah said, “now let’s get on with this mission so we can finish it and get back home, ok?”  
Morgan visibly collected himself.  
“Right,” he said. “Let’s go in there, knock some heads, figure out who killed that agent, kill them right back, get the chip and go home.”  
He got his hand on the door handle before Sarah stopped him  
“First, there will be no killing if we can avoid it at all,” she said.  
Morgan sighed in relief.  
“Thank God,” he said.  
“Second, so far she’s missing. We don’t know that she’s dead.”  
“Ok.”  
“Third,” Sarah went on, “look at the club.”  
He leaned forward so he could see out the passenger window.  
“Big neon light,” he said. “Burly guard at the door. A few people smoking and drinking outside. And I really don’t think they should be bringing their drink glasses out of the club like that.”  
“Look at the people,” Sarah said.  
Morgan frowned.  
“They’re party dressed,” he said. “There are quite a few women.”  
He paused.  
“Actually, there are only women.”  
He looked away hurriedly.  
“And some of them are making out. With each other.”  
Sarah smiled.  
“I’ll be handling this one,” she said. “You wouldn’t be very inconspicuous in there.”  
She got up from her seat and made her way into the back of the van.  
“I guess not,” he mumbled. “Mind you, I’d stand out less than Casey would.”  
“Nah,” Sarah said, her voice sounding muffled, “they’d just assume he was the gay bouncer.”  
Morgan was just about to say something when Sarah reappeared from the back. She’d changed from her black combat fatigues to something more suitable for a night club.  
“Do you think I’ll distract them?” she asked.  
Morgan’s eyes travelled from her golden blonde hair and gorgeous face, down to a sheer white short-sleeved blouse with a black bra just barely visible through it, further on past bare stomach to a very short red leather skirt, down shapely athletic legs to a pair of high-heeled shoes with leather wraps going up the calves.  
“Umghu,” he said.  
He shook his head to clear it while Sarah smirked at him.  
“Yes,” he clarified. “Yes, I think you will distract them. A lot. In fact, I am having thoughts I really should not be having about my best friend’s girlfriend. Which is totally my own problem, and not a reason of any kind for you not to wear whatever you feel like.”  
She handed him a headset.  
“Here,” she said. “I’m wearing a wire, so we can talk.”  
She slid out the passenger door and headed across the street. Morgan’s eyes semi-voluntarily followed the movements of her hips and legs as she walked, until the knowledge of what he was doing reached his brain. He tore his gaze away.  
“Best friend’s girlfriend!” he hissed at himself.

Olivia stared in disbelief at the mountain of files that had just been dumped on her desk.  
“This can’t be right,” she said.  
The guy who’d dumped them there shrugged.  
“It’s the documents you requested,” he said. “I just take the printout, find the boxes and bring them here.”  
“Right,” Olivia said. “Ok. I guess I have some reading to do, then.”  
“Knock yourself out,” the guy said as he left, trolley dragging behind him.  
Olivia looked at the pile again. Something was wrong, that much was clear. She’d entered a query into the cold case database about any other dead bodies found with exaggerated grins and no obvious cause of death. She hadn’t expected to find anything, and when the computer indicated it had found something, she’d just clicked the button to get the files brought to her desk without actually looking at what the screen said. This looked like hundreds of cases. She sat down, grabbed the top file and started skimming through it. Then the next one, and the next one. After that she frowned, and went and got a map and a box of pins.  
After the twentieth file she called Astrid and asked her to come help.  
After she and Astrid had marked the first hundred files on the map, she called Broyles.  
“How have we missed this?” she asked after he’d shown up. “We have a serial killer with at least a hundred victims, and we never noticed?”  
“Cause of death doesn’t look like murder,” Broyles said. “Maybe you should talk to the CDC.”  
She talked to Walter first, to ask him if there were any traces of the death being caused by a disease. She also mentally beat herself up for not wondering about that earlier. She’d got too stuck on the idea of human agency behind any weird death.  
“No,” Walter said. “No disease. At least none caused by any bacteria, viruses, parasites, chemicals or radiation that I have tests for. I have not yet ruled out something congenital or auto-immune. Although I doubt it is either, the effects are too specific and too dramatic for that. Whatever it is, it’s unknown to us.”  
“Could you ask Peter to talk to the CDC?” she said. “I have more files to go through.”  
A couple of hours later, the CDC had claimed never to have heard of the deaths, and Olivia and Astrid where standing looking at a map with lots of little pins in it.  
“I never heard of a disease traveling in a line over time like that,” Astrid said.  
“Me neither,” Olivia agreed. “This is a person. Moving from town to town when things get too hot.”  
“So how are they doing it? And why? And why the regularity? There’s never more than three weeks between cases, and never less than one. Except for this last one, which is the first in months.”  
“If it wasn’t so creepy I’d suggest that it was someone feeding,” Olivia said. “Eating someone when the hunger gets too bad. ”  
They both pondered the suggestion in silence.  
“You’re right,” Astrid said after a while. “That is really creepy.”  
“Yeah. Do you have a better theory?”  
“For it to be a theory, there has to be supporting evidence. What you have is a hypothesis.”  
“All right. Do you have a better hypothesis?”  
Astrid shook her head. “Walter may have.”  
“We can ask later,” Olivia said. “Right now, this new victim is our best lead, so let’s concentrate on her.”  
“No news there,” Astrid said. “Still don’t know who she is.”  
“Let’s hope someone at the club remembers her and can tell us more. Including who she was with.”  
“Right,” Astrid said. “The club.”  
She sounded markedly unenthusiastic.  
“Is there a problem?” Olivia asked.  
Astrid looked away and mumbled something inaudible.  
Olivia turned fully to her.  
“What is it?” she said. “Surely you don’t have a problem going to a place like that?”  
A short, dry laugh came from Astrid.  
“No,” she said. “It’s just that… We’re likely to run into people I know.”  
Olivia smiled.  
“So you have gay friends. Or at least friends who go to gay clubs. I don’t see how that’s a problem,” she said. “Or are you ashamed to be seen with me?”  
She smiled to show she wasn’t serious.  
“The people I was thinking of are, um, the bouncers and the bartenders,” Astrid said.  
It only took Olivia a split second to connect the dots.  
“You’re a regular there,” she said.  
Astrid nodded.  
“Well, I’ll do my best not to embarrass you,” Olivia said. “I can wear a paper bag over my head, if I’m not up to your usual dating standards.”  
This time, Astrid’s laugh held something between outrage and relief.  
“I don’t think it’d be appropriate for me to comment on my boss’ date-worthiness,” she said. “But you won’t need a paper bag.”  
Her look turned serious.  
“Some people will assume we’re dating, though,” she said. “You don’t have a problem with that?”  
Olivia shook her head.  
“If I was dating,” she said, “I’d be proud for it to be someone like you.”  
Astrid looked away, slightly blushing.  
“Um, thanks,” she said. “So, do you think we should dress up to blend in, or dress strict to look like we’re there on business?”  
“I don’t feel like shopping,” Olivia said, “so I’ll be dressed pretty much as usual. And we’re going there to work, so whatever you wear it shouldn’t get in the way of that.”  
“Right,” Astrid said. “Of course.”  
“Also, I don’t think you really want to make any new romantic contacts there tonight anyway.”  
Astrid looked questioningly at Olivia. Olivia nodded at the map with all the pins in it.  
“It looks like our perp often stays in the same place for a time. So anyone new you see may well have left a trail of bodies across half the United States.”

Bo woke up feeling like death warmed over. Or, possibly, death left just like it was. Her head pounded, she was shivering with cold and her throat hurt. Also, she was hungry. Not physically hungry, but the intense burning need for someone else’s life force. Early on, before she really understood what she was, she’d tried to go without feeding for as long as possible. Sometimes she’d managed over a week. Towards the end of those periods, she’d been little more than a ravenous fiend desperately fighting the urge to pounce on someone and fuck them to death.  
What she felt now was worse. She had to feed, and soon. Very soon.  
She sat up, fighting to get the blankets out of the way. She shook her head, trying to get rid of the fog and figure out where she was. Not in her bed, she could tell that much. She looked around, blinking to clear her eyes.  
She was on the living room couch. Which was a relief. At least she wasn’t somewhere strange, with someone she didn’t know. Or a corpse she didn’t know.  
Kenzi was sitting on the floor leaning against the couch, fast asleep. On the table behind her were some medical supplies, obviously used.  
Bo caught herself with her mouth less than a foot away from Kenzi’s, her succubus powers gearing up to start feeding. She swore and with an enormous effort of will tore herself away. Inside her, the hunger shrieked. She needed to feed, and she needed it soon. And the only one nearby to eat was Kenzi. If she’d been anywhere close to normal she might under desperate circumstances have considered eating a little off of the young girl, but at the moment she was certain she wouldn’t be able to stop in time. Whoever she fed on now would die.  
She needed to get away from Kenzi. Fast.  
Bo got up from the couch and stumbled towards the door. She wasn’t sure what she’d do when she got there, except for going through it and out. There would be other people out there, people she didn’t know and care about. People who could sate her burning hunger without her losing her best friend. People she didn’t know. People who were… expendable. She shuddered at the thought, but the need inside her made ethical concerns irrelevant.  
She got out of the house and onto the street. The cold night air cleared her head a little, and she was able to walk mostly straight. She headed down the street without thinking. All of her mental faculties were occupied with either fighting the need to feed or dreaming of how nice it’d feel when she did.  
A car stopped next to her. She looked up, and saw a cab. She also realized she had her arm raised, as if she’d waved at it. Which she might have. Her memory was singularly unhelpful on the topic. She opened the rear door and got in.  
“Hey, you ok?” the driver asked. “You look a bit pale.”  
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just a bit drunk.”  
“Uh-hu. Just don’t puke in my car, ok. I’ll charge you if you do.”  
She could feel the life inside him. Feel his nascent desire, smoldering deep down. She rearranged herself to give him a better view of her cleavage, at the same time as her succubus aura extended. The driver’s smoldering desire flared into a bonfire. Bo gasped, and had to fight not to dive at him and start feeding right then and there.  
“Um, where to?” he said. His eyes in the rear-view mirror were fixed at her chest. He licked his lips.  
Where to? She had no idea. Her head was all foggy. She dug into her pocket, took her hand back out holding a slip of paper. A free drink voucher from the place she and Kenzi had gone to the night before. She held it out towards the driver.  
“Here,” she said. “Take me to this place.”  
There’d be people there. Horny, approachable people.  
As he took the paper, their hands briefly touched. A burst of life energy coursed through her arm and inside her, making her gasp with pleasure.  
“Holy shit, lady!” she heard the driver say. “You’re something else! I nearly creamed my pants from touching you!”  
She smiled, seduction coming automatically.  
“Get me there fast,” she purred, “and maybe I’ll give you a kiss.”  
A kiss of death.  
“Better put on your seat belt,” he said.  
The cab roared to life and accelerated away hard.

The music was loud and bass-heavy. The lighting alternated between shade and flashes of laser light in different colors. A couple of smoke machines belched white fog into the room, making the lasers even more confusing.  
Sarah kind of liked it. It was environment where she could easily vanish, if need be. The music wasn’t bad either. And she almost wished she wasn’t involved with Chuck, so she could’ve made something out of the large number of approving looks she was getting. But only almost. Still, it certainly fed her ego.  
She slowly made her way to the bar, pausing for a few moments here and there to briefly dance with some of the women who tried to get her attention. She even briefly kissed a couple of them, to somewhat establish that she wasn’t just there for curiosity.  
“Hi,” she shouted once she got the attention of a bartender. “A bottle of water, please.”  
“I’m looking for my cousin,” she shouted when the bartender returned with the water. “Do you think you could look at a picture of her and say if she’s been here?”  
The bartender, a harried-looking brunette, nodded and gestured for her to hand over the picture. Sarah dug one out of her belly bag and handed it over. The bartender looked at it for a few moment, shook her head and handed it back. Sarah yelled a probably unheard thanks at her and put the photo back in her bag. She turned to face the room, leaned against the bar and opened the bottle. She wasn’t exactly thirsty yet, but the place was hot so she might as well make sure to stay hydrated. Well, it would’ve been too easy to get a hit on her first try.  
“This is not going to be an easy mission, agent Walker,” the memory of general Beckman said in her head. “And you can’t tell anyone else on your team about it.”  
The general had asked her to remain after the general briefing, on the pretext of discussing some evaluation results.  
“Agent Smith was not transporting a secret chip. She was trying to infiltrate a recently discovered and very dangerous terrorist organization known as ‘The Fae’. As of this time, we don’t know what’s happened to her, but we fear the worst. The chip she’s carrying is implanted subcutaneously in her neck, and is a kind of flight recorder. If we get it, we can find out what happened to her. Among other things.”  
Sarah had nodded her acknowledgement.  
“So what do these ‘Fae’ want?” she asked.  
“We have no idea,” Beckman said. “Which is worrying. We know that they have access to technology that is completely unknown to us, and they kill people. Quite a lot of people. Be very careful, agent Walker. I’m sending you into a minefield blindfolded here.”  
“I will,” Sarah said. “But, if it is so dangerous… why Morgan and not Chuck and Casey?”  
“Because Grimes is a coward,” Beckman said. “Unlike Bartowsky or Casey, he’s unlikely to try to be a hero and rush to protect you at the slightest provocation.”  
Sarah would’ve liked to argue, but it was hard when she really knew that the general had a point.  
“Yes, sir,” she’d said. “When do we leave?”  
As usual, the answer had been “at once”. Just a couple of hours later she and Morgan were on a plane, and now she was here. At a night club, surrounded by women, the majority of which were looking for other women to spend the night with. And some of which might belong to an organization wanting to kill her.  
Well, if nothing else, that fact helped her resist the temptation to cheat on Chuck…  
Someone sidled up to her and asked for a dance. Tall, brunette, average-looking but with a gorgeous smile. Sarah shrugged internally and took her up on her offer. Dancing with a few people, talking a bit and showing them the photo of the missing agent was as good a plan as any. She smiled at the brunette, took her hand and dragged her onto the dance floor.

“So this is where you go on your nights off,” Olivia said.  
She and Astrid where standing on the street outside the lesbian club. There was a short line of women waiting to get in, and the occasional car passing by.  
“Sometimes, when I have any,” Astrid said.  
She’d chosen to dress even more strict and severe than she usually did at work, Olivia noted.  
“So, the people here who might recognize you,” Olivia said, “do they know you work for the FBI?”  
Astrid nodded.  
“I’ve helped the club’s security a couple of times. Nothing big. Arresting someone who got violent, and talking to vice cops for them.”  
They’d been standing there for a little while. Olivia found herself strangely reluctant to enter, and Astrid didn’t seem about to take the initiative any time soon. She gathered her resolve.  
“Right then,” she said. “Let’s do this.”  
She walked up to the club entrance, Astrid at her side. Olivia could feel the angry stares hitting her back as they walked past the line and up to the bouncer. Olivia held up her badge.  
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Agent Dunham with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and this is my partner Agent Farnsworth. We need to ask a few questions about someone we believe visited your establishment last night.”  
The bouncer, a tall, muscular blonde woman with a crew cut, stared at them for a moment.  
“Uh, yes, of course,” she said when the shock had passed. “Astrid? That you?”  
“Yeah,” Astrid said. “This is my boss. And we really are here on business. Nothing to do with the club, though.”  
“As far as we know now, anyway,” Olivia added.  
“Uh, OK,” the bouncer said. “So who is it you’re looking for?”  
Astrid held out a picture of the dead woman.  
“She was found dead early this morning,” Olivia said. “We’re trying to track her movements, and we think she’d been here earlier in the evening.”  
“I wasn’t working last night,” the bouncer said, looking at the picture. “And I can’t remember having seen her before. Ask Clara at the bar, I’m pretty sure she was here last night. She’s been pulling every extra shift she can lately.”  
Astrid frowned.  
“Oh?” she said. “Money trouble?”  
“Nah,” the bouncer said. “She’s just trying to save up for a motorcycle. Some Italian job she saw and fell in lust with. Ask her about it and she’ll talk your ears off.”  
She stood aside to let Olivia and Astrid through.  
The place wasn’t quite as loud as Olivia had feared, but it still wasn’t the kind of place you went to for intimate talks. A large dance floor took up most of the room, with a long bar at the back wall and U-shaped sofas and round tables along the others. It was busy, but not quite full. The music was not to Olivia’s taste.  
“So who’s Clara?” she asked Astrid.  
“Follow me,” Astrid said and set off for one end of the bar. A cute young woman was serving there, long brown hair in a ponytail and a ready smile. Her face lit up when she saw Astrid.  
“Hey, pretty!” she said. “What can I get my hot policewoman tonight? And who’s your gorgeous date?”  
Olivia raised her eyebrows at Astrid, who blushed.  
“Clara,” she said. “Meet my boss, Agent Dunham.”  
Clara had the sense to look embarrassed.  
“Oops,” she said. “My bad.”  
“No problem,” Olivia said. “You’re not bad-looking yourself.”  
Astrid made a strange sound. Clara laughed.  
“Can I you get anything?” she said. “We do have some nice non-alcoholic stuff, assuming you guys don’t drink on duty.”  
“Sounds good,” Olivia said. “And could you take a look at this picture and tell us if you recognize the woman on it?”  
Astrid again produced the picture. Clara looked at it.  
“Yeah, actually,” she said. “She was here last night. I remember, because she kept to the non-alcoholic stuff too. Usually only the girls doing E do that, but this one seemed to be totally sober.”  
“Was she with someone?” Olivia asked. “Particularly, did she leave with someone?”  
Clara sucked in her lower lip.  
“I think she came here with a couple of women,” she said. “But I’m not sure. No idea if she left with anyone. Or when.”  
She handed them their drinks.  
“Tell you what,” she said. “You sit down somewhere, and I’ll ask the others and come tell you. It’ll be faster than if you guys do it. Also, possibly more honest answers. If someone knows something, you can always question them later.”  
Olivia smiled at her.  
“Sounds like a plan,” she said. “Thanks for you help.”  
Clara made a little bow.  
“Anything for our dear Astrid’s crush,” she said before she left.  
Astrid looked somewhere between amused and scared. She looked up at Olivia.  
“You get that she was joking, right?” she said.  
Olivia nodded.  
“Don’t worry,” she said.  
After some looking, they found an unoccupied U-shaped seat and sat down.  
Olivia fiddled with her drink. Astrid looked everywhere except at Olivia.  
“It occurs to me,” Olivia said, “that I really have no idea about your life outside work. What you do. What you like. Who you see. I’ve got a phone number to call if something should happen to you, but I don’t even know who it goes to.”  
Astrid sipped her drink.  
“It goes to my mom,” she said.  
“All right,” Olivia said. “So you have a mom. That’s something.”  
Astrid laughed a little.  
“I don’t talk to her much. Last time was Christmas, I think. She doesn’t really approve of my career.”  
“And still she’s your emergency contact,” Olivia said.  
Astrid looked down.  
“Yeah,” she said. “So you can guess how many important people I have in my life.”  
Suddenly, Olivia felt bad for bringing the topic up.  
“I’m sorry,” she said.  
Astrid looked up at her.  
“For what?” she said.  
“Dragging this up,” Olivia said. “I can see it bothers you. Also, for not really paying attention to you before. For being a bad friend.”  
“We’re workmates,” Astrid said. “You’re my boss. You have no obligation to be my friend.”  
“Maybe not,” Olivia said. “But as a decent human being, I should. And I have failed at that. So I’m sorry. I’ll try to do better.”  
Astrid shook her head and smiled.  
“All right,” she said. “Apology accepted, unnecessary as it was.”  
“Great,” Olivia said. She drank from her own glass. The liquid in it was green and tasted vaguely of pears and Christmas trees.  
“So,” she said. “Who in here have you dated?”  
Astrid have her a scandalized look.  
“Just kidding,” Olivia said. Except as she said she realized that she wasn’t, not entirely. The thought of Astrid with one of the women from the club suddenly fascinated her.  
“Let’s do it like this,” Astrid said. “I tell you someone in here I have dated, and then you tell me someone in here right now who you would date.”  
Olivia was momentarily speechless.  
“I don’t date,” she said.  
“I’m not asking you to actually date one,” Astrid said. “Just pick one who strikes your fancy.”  
“All right,” Olivia said. “I’m game.”  
Astrid pointed out onto the dance floor.  
“See the woman in the dark gray dress over in the corner?”  
Olivia frowned.  
“The blonde?”  
“Just her.”  
“Yeah, I see her.”  
“Went out with her four times a few months ago,” Astrid said.  
Olivia looked at the ex-date. She was about Olivia’s own height, not particularly curvy and had shoulder-length blonde hair. They could easily have borrowed each others’ clothes. A weird feeling rose inside Olivia.  
“So what made you stop?” she said.  
Astrid shrugged.  
“It turned out keeping track of daytime soap plots was as much intellectual achievement as she was interested in. Your turn now.”  
Olivia looked around the room. There were, of course, plenty of attractive women there. She scanned the crowd, and it took her a little while to realize that she was watching for a short black woman to point at. That she was, without having thought about it, about to respond to Astrid’s veiled flirt.  
“Um, excuse me?”  
Olivia looked up, her train of thought derailed. Across the table, she saw Astrid with roughly the same expression. Clara the bartender was standing at their table, putting down fresh drinks for them.  
“We didn’t order anything,” Astrid said.  
“I know,” Clara said. “But I thought I should be a bit discreet. There’s someone else here showing around pictures of your dead girl. Claims she’s looking for her cousin.”  
“Who?” Astrid said.  
“Where?” Olivia said at the same time.  
Clara nodded toward the middle of the dance floor.  
“The really hot blonde with a small harem around her,” she said. “Skirt that could be mistaken for a belt, bare midriff, lots of cleavage.”  
Astrid took off her coat and put it on the seat.  
“I’ll go check her out,” she said and left.  
The first thought through Olivia’s head was to wonder which sense of ‘check out’ she meant. She shook her head. Of course Astrid would be professional. She was very good at her job.  
“Er, thanks,” she said to Clara. She started fumbling for her wallet.  
“It’s on the house,” Clara said. “It’s a nice change that the police actually cares when one of us gets killed.”  
Olivia didn’t know what to say to that. Her first instinct was to protest that it wasn’t so, but she knew quite well that it was. She fished a calling card out of her inside pocket.  
“Here,” she said as she handed it to Clara. “Keep it. For the future. If you ever feel that the local cops aren’t doing their jobs, maybe I can pull some strings.”  
Clara looked wistful.  
“Thanks,” she said. “Although I hope I never need to use it.”  
“Let’s hope.”  
The bartender had already started walking away from the table when she suddenly turned around.  
“Agent Dunham?”  
Olivia looked up.  
“You’re good people,” Clara said. “Don’t break our Astrid’s heart.”  
Olivia stared at her receding back, stunned at the implication. Don’t break Astrid’s heart? As if Astrid actually had a crush on her? Or no, grown people here. So ‘in love’, not ‘a crush’. Even if Olivia knew very little about Astrid’s life, Astrid knew a lot about Olivia’s. Heck, some days it felt like her entire life was a Fringe case for the group to examine. So Astrid would know more than enough about Olivia for love to be an option.  
Olivia sat there, drinking her pear-and-Christmas-tree thing. She tried to sort things out in her head, but her thoughts kept going in circles. And it felt like every time they got back to the point of Astrid maybe having feelings for her, she was more tempted to try and take her up on it. Which was all kinds of wrong and weird.  
Eventually, Astrid slid back onto the seat across the table from Olivia. She was slightly out of breath and had a faint sheen of sweat. Dancing, Olivia guessed.  
“So?” she asked.  
“Well, I eventually managed to get a slow dance with her,” Astrid said. “Pissing off a whole bunch of others who’d been aiming for that.”  
“I hope it wasn’t too horrible an experience,” Olivia said.  
Astrid snorted.  
“The woman is gorgeous,” she said. “I’d say major-league movie star gorgeous, except she’s not stick-figure thin. She’s got a pretty respectable amount of muscle on her. Really serious martial arts kind of muscle.”  
“Well,” Olivia said. “Some people do.”  
“Also, she’s got a gun in her fanny pack, a concealed ear piece in her left ear and a skin-colored throat microphone patch.”  
Olivia was taken aback.  
“That’s spy stuff!” she said, leaning forward across the table.  
Astrid mirrored her movement, leaving them with their faces only half a foot apart.  
“Which would explain why we can’t identify our Jane Doe,” she said. “She was a secret agent.”  
Fireworks were going off in Olivia’s libido. All kinds of inappropriate places on her body were waking up and demanding attention. It took a conscious effort of will for her not to lean further forward and kiss Astrid.  
Something was wrong. This kind of reaction was not her.  
“When we came here,” she said, “there was a black van parked across the street. I bet that’s where the other end of that earpiece and that throat microphone is. Those things don’t have much range.”  
Astrid swallowed and licked her lips.  
“Want me to go check it out?” she said.  
“Yes, please,” Olivia said. “I’ll have a look at our supermodel spy.”  
For a few seconds, their eyes met. Astrid’s gaze held the same burning lust that raged inside Olivia.  
Quickly, before her subconscious managed to trick her into staying, Olivia stood up.  
“Stay outside,” she said. “Call me when you know about the van. If I’m not out of here in an hour, call Peter and Walter for backup before you go back in.”  
“Not Broyles?”  
“If you think it’s necessary.”  
Astrid nodded.  
“Good luck, Agent Dunham,” she said.

Bo was cruising the dance floor. She was feeling a bit better physically, but still couldn’t concentrate. Or keep a thought for long enough to really think things through. She’d paid the cab driver with a kiss, and not stopped to see if he was alive or not before she left. At the entrance to the club, she’d just stroked the bouncer’s hand and been let in without further ado.  
She moved more or less in time to the music. The hunger still burned hot and screaming inside her. But there were people here, people she could feed from. A touch here, a kiss there, a little nibbling on various women’s life forces. When she could just move on to the next woman, she could stop feeding before any single one got hurt. And there was no need to get them aroused so she could feed, it seemed everyone around her was already passionately in love with her. It was like an all-you-can-eat buffet.  
This is wrong, the small remains of her rational self whispered in her head. This is a dance floor, not an orgy. Why is everyone so turned on? And with all I’m feeding off them, why am I getting hungrier?  
Nothing listened to the rational voice. The hunger, the need, drove her. Eyes burning pale blue, she moved on through the dancing crowd.

Kenzi jumped into the car the moment it was close enough to still for her to get the door open.  
“Hale said they found a corpse that had obviously been Succubus-drained less than a block from the club we went to last night, so I figure that’s where she is,” she said as she closed the door behind her. “And I can’t believe I let her get away like that.”  
Lauren accelerated away from the shabby house Bo and Kenzi shared.  
“You were exhausted,” she said. “And it may be just as well that you weren’t conscious.”  
“What do you mean?” Kenzi said. “And what are we going to do when we find her? Do you know what’s wrong with her?”  
“I have a theory,” Lauren said. She looked to the back seat for a moment. Kenzi followed her gaze. There, on the fancy car’s leather upholstery, lay a rifle.  
“Whoa there, doctor Hotpants!” Kenzi protested. “We’re not killing Bo!”  
“No, we’re not,” Lauren said, ignoring the epithet. “It’s loaded with tranquilizer darts.”  
“Oh,” Kenzi said.  
She looked suspiciously at Lauren.  
“Is this standard equipment for Fae doctors?”  
“Near enough that I keep it in the clinic,” Lauren said. “If a powerful Fae becomes confused or delirious, they can be very dangerous.”  
“Oh,” Kenzi said again. “It’s not dangerous for Bo, is it? I mean, she’s not very big and powerful.”  
“She may not be very big, but she is powerful,” Lauren said. “What I’m most worried about is that I may not have enough darts to bring her down.”  
“Seriously?”  
“Yes.”  
Kenzi frowned.  
“Who makes tranquilizer darts for Fae anyway?” she asked.  
“Nobody,” Lauren said. “These were made for elephants.”  
Kenzi stared at Lauren.  
“And you’re going to shoot Bo with them?”  
Lauren nodded.  
“And you worry that it won’t help?”  
“I know that one of them won’t help,” Lauren said. “I worry that ten of them won’t help. Because that’s how many I have.”  
Kenzi stared more.  
“You’re not joking,” she said after a little while. “You really worry that shooting her with enough trank to sedate ten grown elephants won’t be enough.”  
“Yes.”  
“You have a theory,” Kenzi said. “You think you know what’s going on.”  
“I have a guess,” Lauren admitted.  
“So tell me, girl!”  
“I think she’s got Wild Flu,” Lauren said.  
Kenzi glared at her.  
“It’s a Fae childhood disease,” Lauren explained. “They all get it at around puberty, when their powers first manifest. It makes the power go berserk. It can be a bother, but is rarely dangerous since the young Fae won’t have much power yet. It lasts for a week or so, and afterwards they’re immune. But Bo never met any Fae when she was a kid. She never had Wild Flu. Until now.”  
“She’ll be like this for a week?” Kenzi asked.  
“I don’t know,” Lauren said. “It’s a pretty fascinating disease, really. It’s a bacterium that’s evolved to feed off the metabolic pathways that give Fae their powers. In adult Fae, it’s always present but has reached an equilibrium with the host and doesn’t cause any problems. It’s only when it’s first introduced to an uninfected Fae-active host that it becomes problematic, before a balance has been reached. As when a Fae youth gets her powers. Or when an isolated Fae comes into contact with others.”  
“Wouldn’t she have got it from her mom?” Kenzi said. “If they all carry it?”  
“Almost certainly,” Lauren said. “But the bacteria would’ve starved long before Bo gained her powers.”  
“But it’ll still just last for a week or so?”  
Lauren hesitated.  
“Oh-kay,” Kenzi said. “What’s the problem?”  
“Bo has healing powers,” Lauren said. “Normally, the internal balance is reached because too many bacteria puts a strain on the host, which reduces the amount of metabolic activity the bacteria feed on, and there’s a feedback loop. But with Bo, her body will interpret the strain as damage and try to heal it. Also, the bacteria will feed on the healing process itself. So it becomes a vicious circle that keeps going as long as she can feed. And since the bacteria also boost a Fae’s powers… she might be able to feed a lot.”  
There was a silence as Kenzi absorbed what she’d just heard.  
“I was feeling a bit attracted to her this morning,” she said.  
“May well have been her powers going out of control,” Lauren said.  
“At a distance. While she was sleeping.”  
Lauren nodded.  
“So,” Kenzi said, “what we may be looking at here is some kind of ‘All will love me and die’ situation.”  
“Yes,” Lauren said. “So, tranquilizer darts.”  
“If she’s at the club,” Kenzi said, “there won’t exactly be a shortage of people for her to feed on.”  
“No,” Lauren agreed.  
“So, if I get what you’re saying, the plan is to find her, hit her with as many trank darts as possible and then hope the drugs can knock her out before her supercharged healing powers clean them out.”  
“Yes.”  
Kenzi pondered the situation.  
“Fuck,” she summed it up.  
“Let’s hope we don’t do that,” Lauren said.  
They drove on in silence.

Sarah was enthusiastically dancing, more or less with a handful of pretty women who were trying to come on to her, when a prickling in her neck told her that someone was watching her in a non-lusty way. She stopped and turned around.  
A blonde woman stood watching her. There was a clear space around her, as if the dancers didn’t want to get too close. She was about the same height as Sarah, her hair straight and put up in a ponytail. She was dressed in a white blouse, the top couple of buttons undone, dark gray slacks and a black jacket. She was smiling enigmatically at Sarah.  
A surge of pure lust went through Sarah.  
“Hi,” the woman said. “I’m Olivia Dunham. I hear you’re looking for you cousin?”  
Her voice was on the dusky side for a woman, and it sent shivers down Sarah’s spine.  
“I am,” Sarah said, approaching her. “Do you know anything about her?”  
The woman’s – Dunham’s – eyes were dilated. She was slightly flushed. They were both looking at each other as if the rest of the world had suddenly vanished. Sarah found that she was standing closer to her than normal decorum allowed, but she felt no need or desire to move.  
“Maybe,” Dunham said. “Can I see the picture you’ve been showing around?”  
Sarah took it out and handed it over. As she did, their hands met. Dunham’s fingers dragged along the outside of Sarah’s, gently caressing them. Sarah swallowed, her mouth suddenly feeling strangely dry.  
Dunham looked at the picture.  
“I’m afraid I have some bad news,” she said.  
She reached into a pocket in her jacket and took out another picture. She handed both pictures to Sarah. Again, their hands met. Sarah thought she heard the beautiful blonde gasp a little at the contact. Or maybe it was herself.  
The picture was of Agent Smith, but not smiling and healthy as in Sarah’s picture. On Dunham’s, her face was twisted into a disturbing smile and it looked like she was lying on an autopsy table. She was quite clearly not alive.  
“Who are you?” Sarah said. “What happened to her?”  
“I’m with the FBI,” Dunham said. “And I’m trying to figure that out.”  
She moved closer to Sarah, leaned forward to speak softly into her ear.  
“Who are you, agent?” she said. “Because you are not her cousin, that much I’m sure of.”  
A shiver passed through Sarah when Dunham’s breath caressed her ear, from the side of her head all the way down to her toes. It left behind tense tingling in places on its way down. She turned her head to bring her own mouth close to Dunham’s ear.  
“Sarah Walker, CIA,” she said.  
Unable to stop herself, she took Dunham’s earlobe between her lips. She gently teased it with her teeth and caressed it with her tongue. She felt as much as heard Dunham moan. An arm went around her waist. At some point, their bodies had become pressed against each other.  
“Let’s go somewhere less obvious and… discuss,” Dunham said.  
“Let’s,” Sarah agreed. The word came out more like a gasp than proper speech.  
Without letting go of each other, they made their way to a seat in a corner of the room. It wasn’t exactly secluded, but the room was dark and it wasn’t in the middle of the dance floor. Dunham backed onto the couch and half sat half fell into it. She pulled Sarah down after her, so she ended up straddling Dunham’s lap.  
“You ok?” Dunham asked.  
Instead of answering, Sarah bent down and kissed her. All doubt, all rational thought was gone, burned away in the fire of pure lust. She needed to fuck the woman under her, not just wanted to. She grabbed the back of Dunham’s head as she kissed her, making it closer, harder. She felt a pair of warm hands caress her thighs. It wasn’t long before they proceeded in under her skirt. They briefly grabbed her ass, then went away. She broke the kiss and sat up to see what was happening. As soon as she did so, Dunham smiled at her and started unbuttoning her blouse. Which, given that it was being held shut by all of two buttons, didn’t take long. She dropped her arms and shook the blouse off, which not so coincidentally also had the effect of shaking her breasts right in front of Dunham’s face. Instead of the unhooking she’d expected, Dunham simply grabbed the bra’s chest band and tore the clasp open with brute strength. She pulled it down far enough that it fell the rest of the way to the floor by itself, leaving Sarah naked from the waist up. She grabbed Sarah’s breasts, holding them harder than Sarah would normally have liked. But somehow, right then and there, it was exactly what she wanted. Rough, urgent, hard. She got to work on Dunham’s blouse, not caring if the occasional button tore loose. As she was pushing her blouse and jacket off at the same time, she felt the warm hands leave her breasts. Moments later, her thong went the same way as her bra had.  
Unlike Sarah, Dunham was wearing a sensible, supporting sports bra. During the few seconds Sarah took to figure out how to best get it off, Dunham pulled it over her head herself. Sarah pulled her close and kissed her again, this time with the added pleasure of direct skin contact. Dunham’s mouth tasted of some weird fruit, and she was an excellent kisser. Sarah let herself sink fully into the sensation, relishing the warm woman under her. One hand stroked her back, another sought its way in between her legs and ever so gently caressed her wet folds. She groaned into Dunham’s mouth, tried to press her hips down to encourage the touch. It didn’t work. Dunham’s fingers kept teasing her, almost but not quite giving her the contact she craved. She moved her own hands, put them on Dunham’s breasts. Put her thumbs on her nipples and caressed them, matching the movements between her own legs in force and rhythm. After a few moments she increased the force of her touch, and after only a brief hesitation Dunham player along. Sarah let slip an incoherent pleasured sound. She pinched harder, and this time the response was a finger sliding inside her vagina.  
“More!” she gasped. “Faster!”  
Another finger entered her. A mouth descended on her nipple, and fingers on the other. She rode the suddenly very firm hand as hard and fast as she could, raising the tension inside her faster than she’d ever felt before. Faster than she was prepared for, much faster than she could control, the feelings inside her crescendoed and for a few moments became overwhelming. She screamed as she clenched hard on Dunham’s fingers and then – nothing changed.  
She blinked in confusion. She was still just as excited as she’d been before she came. It didn’t make sense. There should’ve been a release, a relaxation. Instead she was still filled with a near-insane desire for the woman on whose lap she was still sitting. The woman who was unbuttoning her pants and pushing them down.  
“I want your mouth on me,” Dunham said.  
It didn’t take a genius to figure out what she meant. Sarah slid down and knelt between the legs she’d just sat on. She helped pull Dunham’s clothes down far enough that they were inconvenient rather than an impediment, and pulled her forward so her hips were at the edge of the seat. Then, all doubts and thoughts of weird sexual responses swept away by passion, she enthusiastically put her mouth to the inviting vulva before her.

In a fit of frustration, Morgan banged the microphone against the dashboard. These stupid missions never went right. And he wasn’t spy enough to fix things. Chuck would’ve known how to make the microphone work. Casey wouldn’t have neglected to check that it worked before he left in the first place.  
But Sarah had, and he couldn’t fix it. So all he could do was sit in the van and listen to Sarah doing… whatever it was that she was doing.  
“Oh yeah, right there!” came Sarah’s voice over the speakers. It sounded tinny and strange, since the throat microphone only picked up the vibrations from Sarah’s larynx and not actual sounds.  
Morgan groaned.  
“Sarah, don’t do this to me,” he said, knowing full well that he wasn’t being heard.  
How could she do this? While he didn’t know for sure what women might say to each other while having sex outside cheesy porn movies, he was pretty darn sure that having sex with another woman was exactly what Sarah was doing at the moment. Or, possibly, other women. She must be infiltrating the terrorist group. Or getting information out of someone. The old honeytrap routine. Which, he had to admit, Sarah was eminently well qualified to use. It couldn’t be that she was doing it just for the sex, because they were on a mission, and she was always dedicated to that. Also, it’d be cheating on Chuck, and the Sarah he knew would never hurt him like that.  
Of course, it’d only hurt him if he found out. Maybe Sarah was using the mission as a cover. Trusting Morgan not to tell, to spare Chuck’s feelings. Or, possibly, she’d forgotten he was there. It wasn’t as if he was doing anything useful.  
“You could lick it off my tits,” Sarah’s voice said.  
“Oh come on!” Morgan exclaimed. “Now how am I ever going to get that image out of my head?!”  
He wondered what the other woman looked like. Dark, probably. The terrorists would be Arabs, of course, so whoever Sarah was with must be a ravishing middle-eastern beauty. Long, black hair, deep brown almond-shaped eyes and bronze-colored skin. She’d be slender but curvy, her breasts pushing gently against Sarah’s…  
He shook his head and groaned again. This mission was going to drive him crazy.  
“Mmm, you can lick it off that too,” Sarah said.  
Ok, this was too much. He had to do something to make this stop. Except that he had just as much idea about how to shut off Sarah as he had of how to turn his own microphone on. And he was supposed to monitor, in case something went wrong. But he must be allowed to take a break, right? Step out of the van for a few moments to catch a breath of fresh air?  
Just thinking that, he could hear Casey growling. But, Casey wasn’t there. So he wouldn’t know. Nor would anyone else. He turned to open the driver’s seat door and looked right into the face of a woman looking in.  
“Gah!” he said, briefly flailing his arms.  
He fought down the panic, put on his most winning smile and rolled down the window.  
“Hi,” he said. “What can I do for you this beautiful night?”  
She was dark-skinned, with curly black hair and a wide, pretty face. She was well dressed, in dark slacks and a severe black coat. She’d just opened her mouth to say something when Sarah’s voice came over the speakers.  
“Oh yes,” Sarah said. “Put it in me. Fuck me with it, fuck me now.”  
The black woman’s eyebrows rose in surprise.  
Morgan felt his smile wilting.  
“It’s the… TV,” he tried.  
“In your van?” she said.  
He tried to produce a convincing and charming laugh.  
“Isn’t it amazing the options they give you these days,” he said.  
“Uh-hu,” she said. “Sir, may I ask what you’re doing here?”  
“Oh, you know,” Morgan said. “Just taking it easy.”  
“In a van with tinted windows, across the street from a lesbian club, while watching… television?”  
“Yes… Er, may I ask who wants to know?”  
For an answer, the woman held up a badge. It said “Federal Bureau of Investigation” on it, as well as “Special Agent Astrid Farnsworth”.  
“Ah,” Morgan said. Swell. The feds. Who he was, theoretically, on the same side as, only he couldn’t actually tell them anything.  
“Um,” he said. “You see…”  
A long, wordless, orgasmic noise came from Sarah.  
“That’s some weird TV show you’re watching,” Agent Farnsworth said. “Can I see it?”  
If she looked into the van, she’d see the loads of spy gear in the back. That wouldn’t be good. Think, Morgan, think, his brain insisted. What would Casey do if he was here?  
Images of the agent’s perforated body thrown several yards down the sidewalk by bullet impacts sprang to mind.  
Ok, no good. What would Chuck do? Probably shoot her with a trank gun.  
Yes!, Morgan’s brain said. We have one of those! He started feeling around under the steering wheel after it.  
There was a metallic clicking sound right next to his ear. He froze. Slowly, he turned his head until he could see straight down the barrel of a revolver.  
“Please step out of the car, sir,” Agent Farnsworth said. “Slowly, carefully and with your hands where I can see them.”

“Stop!”  
Kenzi cried out without warning. Lauren stepped on the brakes, and the car jerked to a stop.  
“What?” Lauren said.  
Kenzi pointed ahead.  
“The black van,” she said. “That’s a stakeout van if I ever saw one. Probably crawling with feds. Stopping where they can see us and getting out of the car with a rifle in hand probably wouldn’t be a very good idea.”  
Lauren left the car idling.  
“So what do we do?” she said.  
Kenzi thought about it for a few moments.  
“Do you have a cover of some kind for the rifle?” she said. “Something that lets you walk the street from here to the club without making people think you’re about to murder them?”  
“Yes,” Lauren said.  
“Great,” Kenzi said. “Wait here while I go distract them, and be ready to hurry inside the club when I return.”  
“I don’t want you to go inside the club,” Lauren said.  
“Hey!” Kenzi said, angrily turning to the doctor. “Bo’s the best friend I’ve ever had. I’m going to help save her, whatever you say.”  
“I get that,” Lauren said. “And I’m entirely with you. But I think you can help better by not going inside.”  
“You got a reason there?”  
“If I’m right, Bo will be in there with her powers working as never before. She usually needs to touch people, but that’s not necessary for a strong succubus. WIth the Wild Flu, she’ll be very strong indeed. Everyone in there will be under the sway of her seduction. I think I have a better shot at resisting her lure for long enough to get some shots off than you would.”  
“Why would you be better than me at that?” Kenzi said. She could hear the petulance in her own voice. She hated that.  
“Well,” Lauren said, her voice very calm and rational. “I won’t be distracted by suddenly finding myself attracted to women, for starters. Also, I have a little experience resisting Bo specifically. I don’t think you do.”  
What she said made sense. Kenzi’s annoyance faded.  
“You think I’d be attracted to women if I went in?” she said.  
“With a supercharged succubus going all-out in a room full of lesbians?” Lauren said. “Oh yes, you would. No question about that.”  
“Maybe I want to try it out,” Kenzi said. She didn’t. The thought of being involuntarily changed like that creeped her out, but she wasn’t going to let Lauren see that.  
“Then you can ask Bo to help you out when she’s herself again,” Lauren said.  
“All right,” Kenzi said. “You win. I stay outside.”  
“Good,” Lauren said. “If I haven’t come out with her in fifteen minutes, call Dyson and say that this block needs to be quarantined and burned to the ground.”  
“What?!” Kenzi exclaimed. “What the hell, doctor? We can’t kill all those people!”  
“If Bo’s not shut down, everyone in there will be braindead by morning anyway. And if I fail to stop her now, it’s very unlikely anyone else will be able to later. A fire will cover our tracks and explain the deaths.”  
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Kenzi said. “This is insane.”  
“LIfe with the Fae,” Lauren said. “So, you distract whoever is in that van and I go inside while you do it?”  
“Yeah,” Kenzi said. “Better hurry, huh?”  
Lauren smiled at her.  
“No time like the present,” she said.  
She got the rifle from the back seat and slid it into a soft case. She put an extra magazine into her pocket.  
“I’ll go a few seconds after you reach the van,” she said.

The CIA guy got out of the car. He was half a foot taller than Astrid, but somehow managed to seem smaller. He was either scared and clumsy, or very good at acting like he was. She kept the gun carefully trained at him. You never knew with CIA people. They could surprise you. And what was going on with that woman’s voice? It wasn’t a TV, that much was obvious. It ought to be the hot blonde agent inside the club, but why was she having sex with someone?  
“What I’m going to do now?” the female voice said from the speakers in the van. “Why, Agent Dunham, if you don’t mind I think I’m going to eat your pussy again. Because it’s just so delicious.”  
It took Astrid’s brain a few seconds to fully register what she’d just heard. Once she did, she blinked a couple of times, and then still didn’t quite believe she’d just heard that.  
“Who is that?” she asked, waving the gun a little for emphasis. “And don’t try to squirm any more, I know you’re CIA or something like that.”  
The guy seemed to wilt a little.  
“It’s my partner,” he said. “She’s in the club. And we’re… with the CIA.”  
“Why on Earth is a CIA agent doing…”  
Words failed her.  
“…doing that to my boss?”  
Images played in her brain. Images of Olivia, naked and legs spread, with the gorgeous blonde’s head at her crotch. Or, well, the other gorgeous blonde. Which was very hot, yes, but also very wrong. To the best of her knowledge, Olivia didn’t swing that way at all. Nor would she do such things spontaneously, with a stranger, during an investigation.  
“Your boss?” the CIA guy said. “She’s with your boss?! Why is she with your boss? She’s supposed to be looking for some terrorists!”  
“Mmm, all pink and juicy,” the speakers said.  
“Can we turn that off?” Astrid said.  
The CIA guy mumbled something she didn’t catch.  
“What?” she said. “Speak up!”  
“I don’t know how!”  
She stared at him.  
“You don’t know how to operate your own equipment?” she said.  
He looked away, clearly embarrassed.  
“I’m new at this, ok?” he said.  
Astrid stared at him some more.  
“Do you have any proof that you’re actually CIA?” she asked.  
“Oh, very funny,” he said. “Make fun of the new guy, do that.”  
“Lie down, face to the street,” she said. “Hands on your back.”  
“What?” he said. “You’re arresting me? Oh, come on!”  
She thumbed back the hammer on her revolver. The guy paled and very quickly did as she’d ordered. She carefully approached and put handcuffs on his wrists and ankles. She eased back the revolver’s hammer and put it back in its holster. Her inner self sighed in relief. Even as she pointed the gun at him, she’d been sure that he had some weird spy trick up his sleeve that’d turn the tables on her in an instant. Which was still possible, she guessed, but it didn’t seem very likely.  
“We’re supposed to be on the same side, you know,” he said.  
“So you claim,” Astrid said.  
She pulled open the van’s side door and looked inside. The back of it was full of electronics racks. There were floor-mounted seats with belts, clearly meant to keep operators in place at the racks while the van was moving none too gently. Near the front of the van was a rack unit with a row of LEDs that moved in time with the sounds that came through the speaker. It also had a little label saying “Receiver” and a power switch. She flipped the switch, and the sounds vanished.  
“Hey!” the guy said from outside. “How did you do that? Do FBI agents get training on spy equipment? You’d need it when hunting foreign spies, right?”  
“I used my brain,” Astrid said. “Try it some time.”  
There didn’t seem to be anything else urgently interesting in the van. The whole of it argued for that the guy was actually right when he claimed to be with the CIA, although she couldn’t for the life of her imagine why they let such a clown loose in the field. She sat down on the van’s doorstep, feet on the sidewalk.  
“Ok,” she said. “Tell me why you’re here and what you’re up to.”  
“We’re looking for a missing agent,” the guy said. “She was supposed to infiltrate a terrorist cell. This club was the last place we knew she’d been, so Sarah went in to have a look.”  
“Sarah’s the good-looking blonde with the skanky clothes?”  
“Yeah,” he said. “Although the clothes were to make it easier for her to approach people, and to distract them.”  
“Sounds like she’s better at this than you are, because that worked like a charm.”  
“She’s the real spy,” he said. “I’m just… actually, I’m not sure what I am.”  
“What have you found so far? And what terrorists?”  
“Nothing, unless Sarah turned something up in there. And I don’t know. Sarah got the briefing.”  
She looked at him.  
“So you really don’t know anything at all?” she said.  
He sighed.  
“No,” he said. “I really don’t.”  
“Do you know what the truly sad thing is?” Astrid said.  
“No, what?”  
“I believe you.”  
She got up.  
“I shouldn’t leave an immobilized suspect alone,” she said, “but I have to get in there and see what’s going on with Olivia. Try not to choke on your own tongue.”  
“That’s a risk?! Hey!”  
Astrid had just put her hand on the door handle to close it when a new voice said something.  
“Mom?”  
Near the back of the van, as if she’d just stepped out from behind it, a young woman stood. She was thin, pale, black-haired and dressed like a goth.  
“Excuse me?” Astrid said.  
“Mother?” the girl said. “Is that really you? I’ve been looking for so long!”  
Astrid was too stunned to even say anything as the girl ran forward and hugged her, hard.  
“I’ve missed you so much!” the girl sobbed.  
She was taller than Astrid. Also, up close it was obvious that they were about the same age. Not to mention that the girl was pale as chalk and looked vaguely Eastern European.  
“Um, miss?” Astrid said. “I really think you have the wrong person.”  
The girl hugged her tighter.  
“What? Mom? Why won’t you acknowledge me? Why did you ever abandon me?”  
“I’m not your mother,” Astrid said. “I have no children, and even if I did they’d be nowhere near your age.”  
She tried to sound confident and assertive, but suspected that she came across more confused and nervous. She had no idea what to do about an obviously insane person clinging to her. She couldn’t reasonably use force, or at least not very much of it. She got her hands on the girl’s shoulders and managed to fairly gently push her far enough away that she could see her face.  
“Hey!” she said. “I’m not your mother. Your mother is not here.”  
The girl looked at her. She didn’t look very crazy, despite her behavior.  
“She’s not?” she said.  
“No,” Astrid said.  
“Do you mind if I borrow the car?” she said.  
“Of course not,” Astrid said, her mind too focused on placating the crazy person to immediately get what she said.  
“No, wait, what?” she continued, but the girl had already let go of her, tossed a “Thanks!” over her shoulder and jumped into the driver’s seat. Before Astrid managed to gather enough wits to do anything but stand dumbstruck, she’d started the car and was accelerating away as fast as the van could manage.  
“Hey! That’s our car!” the guy on the ground shouted.  
“Did you see that?” Astrid asked when her thoughts had settled somewhat. Maybe it had been a hallucination. Maybe there was something in the air making people go crazy. That’d explain why Olivia was apparently having sex with a really hot female CIA agent.  
“Hell yeah,” the guy said. “I could totally see up her skirt.”  
As Astrid started hurrying over the street to the club entrance, she made sure to accidentally kick him in the head.

Olivia felt strange. She still felt incredibly horny, in spite of having had more orgasms than she could count with Sarah. Time was unclear, and she couldn’t for the life of her remember how long they’d been going at it. Also, she was strangely exhausted. It felt almost like she’d had a fever for a long time.  
The weariness. That was what her subconscious was screaming about. The weariness felt wrong. It was not like that which came after exercise, or long hours of work. It was more like the kind of tired she’d experienced after moving between universes. She pushed Sarah’s head away from her chest, where she’d been happily teasing Olivia’s nipples.  
“Wait,” she said. “Hold on.”  
Sarah looked up at her, eyes glazed over with lust.  
“What?” she said. “Did I do something wrong? I’ll be happy to try again.”  
“Do you do this often?” Olivia said. Her hands moved to Sarah’s breasts almost on their own. It took real effort to pull them back, to not fondle her.  
“Do what?”  
“Have sex with people you’ve just met in clubs.”  
She could see Sarah try to think. And again she had to force herself not to touch her.  
“No,” Sarah said. “I never do that.”  
Olivia rose. She had to use mild force again to push Sarah out of the way. Once her hand was on the other woman’s skin, it was so hard to let go again. She focused on the warning bells going off at the back of her head and somehow managed it. Standing up, she looked around the club. The entire place was an orgy. There were naked women everywhere, all of them engaged in sexual activities with each other. Even the staff, she realized when she saw Clara with a couple of other women on top of the bar. As far as she could see there was only one woman in the club who was still fully dressed and by herself.  
The one in the middle of the dance floor with the brightly glowing eyes and the luminescent blue fog coming off of her. Or, no, the fog was going into her.  
“Who is that?” Sarah said.  
She had also got up, and stood with an arm around Olivia’s back and a hand on her breast. The feeling from her running her finger around her nipple left Olivia gasping and her concentration badly weakened. She shook herself to get rid of the hand. Protection. She needed something to shield herself. Her blouse and jacket were lying nearby on the floor, one entangled in the other from taking them both off at the same time. She grabbed them and started putting them on.  
As she was buttoning the blouse, she noticed that Sarah wasn’t trying to grope her any more. She cast a quick look to the side while she picked her slacks off the seat. Sarah was standing totally still, tears running down her face.  
“She’s so beautiful,” she said. “Do you think she’s an angel?”  
“No,” Olivia said. “I don’t.”  
With some clothes on, it took a little less effort to resist the incredible temptation. But it was hard, so hard. There was love there, right in front of her. The shining woman loved her, she knew it, knew to the very core of her being.  
Except for the little Cortexiphan-enhanced center of her nervous system, which kept screaming that all this was wrong, so very wrong.  
Olivia picked up the little scraps of clothing that Sarah had been wearing and held them out to her.  
“Here,” she said. “Put these on.”  
Sarah started uncomprehending at the pieces of cloth.  
“It’ll help you think,” Olivia said. She would’ve put them on the other woman herself, but she didn’t dare touch her.  
“No,” Sarah said. “I don’t think the angel wants me dressed.”  
“It’s not an angel,” Olivia said. “I don’t know what she is, but not that.”  
She tried to sound sure of herself.  
Sarah started walking toward the shining woman. Olivia stared at her swinging hips, marvelous ass and amazing legs for a few breaths before she managed to stop. By then, Sarah was out of her reach.  
“Sarah!” she shouted. “Stop!”  
Faint streams of blue mist were coming out of Sarah’s head. They flickered and moved, as if there was a strong wind blowing to the shining woman. Sudden understanding struck Olivia.  
The woman was feeding, just like Astrid and she had speculated. Draining people to ecstatic death.  
Olivia started moving away, stumbling at first. The fear helped her resist the desire, and it became slightly weaker with distance. She stepped over naked bodies and dodged women in more upright positions, trying not to touch them. She wished she’d had the strength to get her shoes. Multicolored laser light still played over the carnal scene, even though the music had fallen silent, giving the entire scene a weird otherworldly look. All it needed was a few demons and it’d look like it was painted by Hieronymus Bosch. A few demons, and taking out the woman with the rifle.  
Olivia took a few more steps before it consciously registered what she’d seen. She stopped and turned abruptly. Woman with rifle?!  
Over near the entrance, a fully dressed blonde woman was standing. She held a rifle clutched to her chest. She was looking at the shining woman in the middle of the room, and she was crying. Olivia headed her way, more urgently than she’d moved before. If she could get the rifle, she might be able to stop whatever was happening. If she could do it fast enough, maybe she could save Sarah. Not that she knew for sure what would happen when Sarah reached the shining woman, but she suspected she’d seen the result of it on an autopsy table only hours before.  
When she came close, the woman with the rifle turned her head to look at her.  
“I can’t do this,” she said. “I love her.”  
“We all do,” Olivia said. Because she did. For no reason, even knowing she was a killer, she loved the shining woman with all her heart.  
The woman with the rifle shook her head.  
“No,” she said. “Not just now, always. Since I first met her. I can’t shoot her. I know I have to, but I can’t.”  
Her hands were shaking badly enough that Olivia thought she might drop the rifle.  
“Let me,” she said. “You look like you wouldn’t hit her right now even if you tried.”  
The woman hesitated for a moment, then handed the rifle to Olivia. She reached into her pocket and took out an extra magazine, and held out that too.  
“Here,” she said. “Use all of them.”  
Olivia looked at the top of the magazine. Tranquilizer darts. Ah. The explained why the rifle looked unfamiliar. She took it.  
“Darts will still hurt quite a lot at this distance,” she said. It made her reluctant to fire. She really, really didn’t want to hurt her loved one.  
“She’ll heal,” the woman said. “Oh, she’ll heal.”  
It sounded like there was more to that than was obvious to Olivia, but that was a question for later.  
Olivia raised the rifle to her shoulder and aimed. She fired. A dart appeared suddenly, stuck in the shining woman’s chest, right above her cleavage. Involuntarily, Olivia winced at what she’d done. She concentrated, forced herself to clam down and worked the rifle’s bolt.  
“Oh, Bo,” she heard the woman next to her softly say. “I’m so sorry.”  
Olivia fired again, and again, and again. Three more darts were sticking out of the woman’s ribcage, close together. Having gotten a feel for how the rifle fired, Olivia changed her aim a little and the fifth dart hit the side of her neck.  
The streaming blue mist lightened, and her eyes didn’t glow so brightly any more. Only a few steps away from her, Sarah stumbled and briefly stopped.  
Olivia ejected the empty magazine and inserted the second one. It was markedly less hard to suppress the feelings of love and lust. She fired again, this time aiming for the arteries in the woman’s thighs. At the eighth dart, the mist and glowing eyes went out and the woman slowly collapsed to the floor. The intense emotions vanished, totally and with an abruptness that made Olivia stumble.  
She turned to ask the woman next to her if the last two darts were necessary, but she was already running towards the center of the dance floor.

Lauren knelt by Bo’s head. She’d stopped panicking as soon as she felt Bo’s pulse beat under her probing finger, and saw her chest slowly rise and fall as she breathed. Unable to help herself, she bent down and placed a kiss on Bo’s forehead. The succubus was fever hot against her lips, and that brought Lauren back to the present. She needed to get Bo back to the clinic. She looked up.  
All over the club its guests were waking up from their confusion. Most, if not all, were in some state of undress, and quite a few had suddenly come to their senses while engaged in some sort of sexual activity. There was shock, and crying, and angry shouts.  
“What happened?” she heard someone ask nearby, the questioner’s voice brittle with tension.  
“We were drugged,” she heard the woman who’d taken her rifle say. “Someone put something in the ice machine, so we all got it.”  
“How could someone do that?!” the questioner screamed.  
The shooter squatted on the other side of Bo from Lauren.  
“Hey,” she said. “Are you ok?”  
Lauren nodded.  
The shooter reached out her hand.  
“Olivia Dunham,” she said.  
Lauren shook it.  
“Lauren,” she said.  
She looked at Olivia a bit more closely. She was barefoot, and her hair messed up. Her blouse was buttoned wrong, and the zipper on her pants undone.  
“Are you ok?” Lauren said.  
“I’m fine,” Olivia said. “I take it you know this one?”  
She nodded toward Bo.  
“Yes,” Lauren said. “She’s ill. I need to get her to the clinic as soon as possible. I’m not sure how long the sedative is going to hold.”  
“She caused all this,” Olivia said. It wasn’t a question.  
Lauren smiled thinly.  
“Good luck getting anyone to believe that,” she said.  
“Excuse me?”  
They both looked up. A blonde woman was standing there, stark naked but trying to shield relevant parts with her hands.  
“Sarah?” Olivia said.  
“I think we should try to get her out of here before she wakes up,” Sarah said. “We might not get lucky again.”  
Olivia nodded.  
“Right,” she said. “Let’s get her out of here.”  
Lauren got her arms under Bo’s shoulders at the same time as Olivia got hers under her legs. Together, they easily lifted the succubus.  
“My partner is in a black van right across the street,” Sarah said. “Use that, it’ll be easy to get her into.”  
As soon as the words were out, she suddenly paled and put her hands over her mouth.  
“Yeah,” Olivia said. “You’re still wearing the microphone. Your partner will have heard everything you said earlier.”  
“Olivia?” a new voice said. “Are you all right?”  
It was a short black woman. She was properly dressed, so Lauren assumed she’d just arrived.  
“I’m fine,” Olivia said. “Astrid, could you help Agent Walker here get some clothes on? Hers are over on the seat there.”  
Olivia indicated a direction with a nod.  
Astrid looked at the naked Sarah. She swallowed.  
“Sure,” she said, somewhat weakly.  
“Thanks,” Olivia said. “Oh, and if you can find my shoes I’d be really grateful.”  
They got moving. Bo wasn’t a very large woman, and Lauren certainly liked holding her, but her arms were still getting tired. With some shoving and more than a few shouted “Excuse us!” they made their way out of the chaotic club. The street outside held much less people than Lauren had expected. Although when she thought about it, not very many of those inside would be particularly eager to leave in a state of undress.  
“I don’t see any black van,” Olivia said just a few seconds before one stopped right in front of them. The sound of steps came from inside it, and then the rear doors opened.  
“Get her in here,” Lauren heard Kenzi say.  
Somehow, she managed to suppress her astonishment. Kenzi was the partner of someone who’d been called “agent” by Olivia? Who herself had more than a little air of law enforcement over her.  
They got Bo into the van and laid her down on the floor. Lauren again knelt next to her and checked her vital signs. Her pulse was a little weaker than she liked, and it felt like her fever had gone up some.  
“They need you inside,” Kenzi said. “I sounded urgent.”  
“Ok,” Olivia said. “Wait here.”  
Lauren looked up from Bo, and saw Kenzi look after Olivia. She was wearing a headset, she noted. That must be how she knew what was going on inside.  
“Right,” Kenzi said and slammed the doors shut. She hurried to the driver’s seat, started the van and drove away. As they turned a corner, she started laughing.  
“Who’s your mama, fed bitches!” she exclaimed. “Kenzi rides to the rescue. Oh yeah!”  
“You stole their van?” Lauren said.  
“It’s paid for with tax money,” Kenzi said. “So technically, we own part of it. Or, you own part of it. I would if I’d ever paid taxes.”  
Laughter burbled out of Lauren’s mouth before she could stop it, and as soon as it was out she saw no reason not to. Bo was alive and they were getting away! If that wasn’t enough reason to be happy, she didn’t know what was.

The three women were standing around the handcuffed man on the sidewalk. Olivia was properly dressed again, shoes and all. Astrid found herself to be both relieved and disappointed about that. On one hand, it made it much easier for her to keep her mind on the situation. On the other, Olivia half-dressed was a very attractive sight.  
The CIA agent, Sarah, was about as dressed as she was going to get at the moment. They’d found her blouse and skirt, and she’d never taken her shoes off in the first place, but her underwear was a total loss. Which left her in a rather transparent blouse and an extremely short skirt. Astrid could easily see that they were not enough to keep her warm in the slight night breeze. The guy was as she’d left him a few minutes ago.  
“I’m sorry,” Olivia said. “You just said your partner was in the van. I thought the girl was her.”  
“I should apologize,” Sarah said. “I had no idea my partner had been chained up by the FBI.”  
“Sorry,” Astrid said. “I didn’t know he was CIA. He was obviously spying on the club, and I though he was reaching for a gun. Also, he was much too incompetent to be an agent.”  
“Gee, thanks,” came from the ground.  
“I understand,” Sarah said, ignoring the guy. “I might have done the same, had I been in your shoes. I’m really not angry at you guys.”  
“So what now?” Olivia said.  
“How about getting these things off me?” the guy said, rattling his handcuffs.  
“If I can just arrange to have Agent Smith’s body sent back to our base, I’m done here,” Sarah said. “Is that going to be a problem?”  
Olivia shook her head.  
“No,” she said. “That’ll be fine. And we’ll keep trying to find her killer. What about your van?”  
“There’s nothing secret in it,” Sarah said. “We’ll leave it to the local police.”  
“How are you going to get home?” Astrid said.  
“Taxi to the airport, then fly,” Sarah said. “It’s no problem.”  
Both Olivia’s and Astrid’s eyes fell to Sarah’s chest.  
“You should probably… get something else to wear before you go on public transportation,” Olivia said.  
Sarah crossed her arms across her breasts.  
“I will,” she said.  
Olivia hesitated, as if she wasn’t sure what to say.  
“It’s been interesting meeting you, Agent Walker,” she eventually said.  
“Likewise,” Sarah said.  
Astrid looked from one to the other. They were both just standing there, looking into each other’s eyes and smiling. A sudden pang of jealousy stabbed her heart.  
“Are we done, then?” she said, getting both of the other women to look at her.  
“Yes,” Olivia said. “We are.”  
“Good,” she said.  
She knelt down and got her handcuffs from the CIA guy. Sarah reached out a hand and helped her up again, which was unnecessary but nice.  
“Let’s go, then.”  
The CIA guy stood up. He stretched and shook his arms and legs, groaning all the time.  
“Damn,” he said. “I can’t believe there are guys who pay to have that done to them. So, Sarah,…”  
His voice died out as he looked at her. His face reddened in an instant, and he quickly turned his back to her.  
“Um, Sarah?” he said.  
“Yes, Morgan?” she said.  
“That outfit was really racy when you had underwear on.”  
“Don’t you like it?” she said.  
“Of course I like it!” he said. “Every guy in the world would like it! That’s the problem!”  
Olivia waved discreetly at Sarah, who smiled back. Olivia and Astrid started walking to their car, leaving the two CIA agents to their discussion.  
“I can take it off, if you don’t like it.”  
“Yes, I really think you should do… Do you have anything else to put on instead?”  
“Sure. In the van.”  
“Ah.”  
When they were safely out of earshot, Astrid turned to Olivia.  
“Were they really CIA agents?” she asked.  
“I think so,” Olivia said. “But I’ll ask Broyles to check things out before we send that corpse anywhere.”  
“It’s hard to imagine that guy actually being a secret agent.”  
Olivia shrugged.  
“Maybe he stumbled into something secret and they had a choice between hiring him and killing him.”  
“I guess.”  
They walked the rest of the way in silence.  
What should’ve been a decently quick flight turned into a nightmare of bad weather, airport security incidents and broken-down planes. At times, Sarah wondered if she was cursed. Not that she believed in the supernatural, but so much bad luck at once could make the most hardened sceptic at least entertain a moment’s doubt. They got bounced from one place to another, and almost a full day after they’d started their journey she and Morgan were waiting in a hotel lobby for the night clerk to figure out if he had rooms for them.  
“What’s he doing?” Morgan complained. “It’s taking forever!”  
Ha was pacing back and forth, which was slowly driving Sarah insane. She was sitting in a deceptively comfortable-looking armchair, trying her best not to snap and kill everyone in sight. Her irritation was heightened by her clothes, which didn’t fit. And scratched. She was wearing a pair of badly-made blue jeans, a snug white polyester turtleneck and a pair of red tennis shoes. All of it had been badly overpriced and none of it was of a brand she’d ever heard of before, but when you’re shopping for clothes in a city you don’t know while you’re nearly naked, you can’t afford to be choosy. At least they covered her up decently. Except that her nipples were clearly noticeable through the thin polyester, to her annoyance and Morgan’s steady embarrassment.  
“Can’t you do something?” Morgan said. “Some kind of Jedi mind trick they taught you in spy school?”  
Sarah sighed. Well, she was getting fed up with this.  
“There is one thing I could try,” she said.  
Morgan stopped pacing.  
“There is?” he said. “Can I watch while you do it?”  
“Sure,” she said.  
She got up out of the chair and walked over to the reception desk. She banged the bell.  
“Hey!” she shouted. She kept banging the bell until the clerk appeared.  
“Yeah,” he said, “what is it?”  
“Do you remember us asking if you had rooms for us?” she said.  
“Yeah, sure, I’m looking,” he said. He didn’t seem very eager to find anything. Plus, he was chewing gum with his mouth open.  
Fast as a snake, Sarah reached out and grabbed the guy. She pulled him bodily over the desk and slammed him face first to the floor. She dropped down heavily with a knee in his back, and pulled one of his arms up behind his back until he screamed. Then she let go a little until he fell silent.  
“For every room you find for us in the next sixty seconds,” she said, “you win a prize. Understood?”  
“Yeah, yeah!” he panted. “Sure! I understand!”  
“Aren’t you going to ask what the prize is?” she said.  
“Uh… What’s the prize?”  
She twisted his arm up higher again, at the same time as she bent down so her mouth was only an inch from his ear.  
“The prize is a shoulder that’s not dislocated,” she hissed. “Now get moving!”  
She pulled him up and threw him back over the desk. He fell to the floor with a lot of noise and flailing, but was back up very quickly. He started typing very fast at the keyboard to the reception computer.  
“Effective,” Morgan said, “although I’m not sure it counts as a Jedi mind trick. Too much brute force.”  
“Forty-five seconds,” Sarah said.  
“It did have a certain brutal elegance, I guess. I mean, violence can have aesthetic properties. Just see the movies of John Woo. They didn’t come up with the term ‘gun ballet’ without a reason, if you get my drift.”  
“Thirty seconds.”  
“Cooking can have too, you know. You should’ve seen my old Hibachi master in action. Pure elegance. He’d make sure that when liquid dropped off something he was cooking, he’d make sure the drops fell on a coal of just the right temperature to bring out the kind of smoke he wanted the taste of. It was glorious.”  
“Fifteen seconds.”  
The clerk pulled papers out of a printer almost before they’d finished printing, and grabbed a couple of keys from under the desk.  
“Here!” he said. “Rooms! Please don’t hurt me!”  
Sarah took the keys and papers he was holding out.  
“Thank you,” she said, smiling pleasantly at him.

An hour later, Sarah was drying her hair after a long, hot shower. The room was obviously the best the hotel had, and their room service had been able to produce some acceptable food. She was feeling a whole lot better than she had for the entire rest of the day. The stress and anger had receded to a mild background blur.  
Which, unfortunately, left her able to think about the mission.  
On one level, it felt like it had been a disaster. She’d been completely out of control most of the time, her partner had been left disabled by the FBI and the terrorists had stolen their van.  
On another level, they had achieved their mission objective with the only loss being an easily replaceable van. And their dignities, which were entirely expendable in the eyes of the CIA. Plus, she’d gotten to have mind-blowing sex with a gorgeous FBI agent.  
It was that last bit that she couldn’t stop thinking about. Agent Olivia Dunham from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Just thinking the name sent a wave of lust through Sarah, and this time she didn’t even have weird chemicals, or whatever it had been, to blame. She simply fancied the woman something fierce.  
She put the hair dryer away, made sure the towel she was wearing was sufficiently fastened and went to look out the window.  
Chances were, she’d never see the FBI agent again. They worked entirely different spheres. Dunham took care of ordinary crimes among the American people, Sarah fought foreign threats against the nation. There wasn’t a whole lot of overlap. Also, she didn’t want to mess up her relationship with Chuck. As horny as Dunham made her, she was in love with Chuck. So what she really needed to do was forget about Dunham.  
Which would be a lot easier if she wasn’t so damn horny.  
Well, that could be taken care of. Although she’d need some help in order to not fantasize about Dunham. She briefly considered calling Chuck, but dismissed the idea. He’d wonder what was going on, and she didn’t really want to tell him. Also, he might get into one of his usual obsessive sidetracks instead of doing as she asked.  
But there were alternatives.  
She fished her phone out of the fanny pack and started scrolling through its contact list. She tapped the name she was looking for, and as the phone dialed she put on the handsfree headset for it.  
The phone rang a handful of times before someone picked up.  
“Hello,” a female voice said. Carina’s voice.  
“Do you remember that time in Cordoba?” Sarah said.  
There was a brief silence.  
“Sarah?” Carina said. “Is that you?”  
“Yes,” Sarah said. “It’s me.”  
“Sure I remember Cordoba,” Carina said. “It’s not every day your sniper can’t do her job because she’s too horny to keep still!”  
“Remember how you dealt with it?”  
There was another brief silence.  
“What are you up to now, min lilla slampa?” Carina said. She sounded amused.  
“Think you could do it again?”  
Carina laughed.  
“Sure,” she said. “It’ll be my pleasure.”  
“So am I twoja mała dziwka?” Sarah asked.  
“Calling me in the middle of the night for this? You sure are.”  
Sarah sat down on her bed.  
“Is that bad?” she asked.  
“We’ll see,” Carina said. “So, what is my little slut wearing?”  
“Only a towel wrapped around me.”  
“Well, that is far too much. Get rid of it. And fondle those tits of yours, I want your nipples hard as little pebbles. Oh, and why aren’t your legs spread yet?”  
Sarah dropped her towel and lay back to happily follow her orders.

“So we’re just going to drop the case?”  
Astrid was aghast.  
“Yes,” Olivia said. “Orders from above, Broyles said. Way above.”  
They were sitting in a diner not very far from Walter’s lab. They’d sent off the dead CIA agent’s body earlier in the day, and had been trying to trace the strange woman from the lesbian club when Olivia got the call from Broyles.  
“That’s not right!” Astrid said.  
Olivia shrugged.  
“Apparently the case is already being handled by some other agency,” she said. “I guess they don’t want us stepping on their toes.”  
“It still sucks,” Astrid said. “After all you went through, just to have it snatched out of our hands.”  
“We’ve had things just vanish in front of us before,” Olivia said. “This time at least we have some reassurance that someone is doing something about it.”  
“I guess,” Astrid said.  
The message had put a severe damper on their enthusiasm for work. Since they didn’t actually have anything else important to do, Olivia had suggested they go for an extremely long lunch. Possibly long enough to include dinner as well, and just maybe including drinks. They’d finished some pretty decent burgers, and Olivia was well into her third beer. Astrid was nervously nursing her first. Not that she minded beer, but she was nervous about getting drunk around Olivia.  
“What do you mean ‘all I went through’ anyway?” Olivia said.  
Astrid froze with her beer glass halfway to her mouth.  
“Um,” she said. “You know. With the CIA agent.”  
Olivia looked at her with an expression Astrid couldn’t read.  
“Agent Walker?” she said. “What about her?”  
She might as well spit it out. She didn’t like trying to keep things from Olivia anyway, and it was nothing but the truth.  
“She was wearing a wire, remember?” Astrid said. “While I was dealing with her partner, I heard… things.”  
“Oh,” Olivia said.  
“Her partner was listening in on speakers,” Astrid said. “We could only hear what she was saying since she had a throat mike, but what she said was… suggestive.”  
Olivia let out a feeble laugh.  
“Diplomatically put,” she said. “The way I remember it, she said quite a few things that were outright pornographic.”  
“Well, yes,” Astrid said. “She did.”  
She hesitated.  
“Do you want to talk about it?” she said. “What happened to you?”  
Olivia turned to look at her.  
“What happened to me,” she didn’t quite ask.  
“Olivia,” Astrid said, “being forced into sex you didn’t want can have really serious psychological consequences. You should talk to someone. I’d be honored if it was me, but if not the bureau has therapists for situations like this. You know that. And it’s not a failure to go to them. You don’t have to be the toughest woman in the world all the time.”  
Olivia smiled at her. A small, rather crooked smile, but still a smile.  
“Thanks,” she said.  
Astrid sighed.  
“For what?” she said.  
“Telling me off,” Olivia said. “Quite a few people wouldn’t dare talk like that to their bosses.”  
“Don’t change the subject.”  
Olivia’s smile widened a fraction of an inch.  
“You really are in the right line of business.”  
Astrid raised an eyebrow.  
“Ok, ok,” Olivia said. “I’ll talk.”  
“I’m listening,” Astrid said. She tried to sound caring rather than upset.  
“I don’t feel like I was forced,” Olivia said.  
“You can’t say it was something you would’ve done on your own,” Astrid said. “That well I know you by now. It wasn’t even your own sexual orientation!”  
“Um,” Olivia said, looking a bit sheepish.  
Astrid’s world spun roughly a hundred and eighty degrees.  
“Or so I thought,” she said. “What with your history with guys and all.”  
“It’s not the kind of thing you publicize in our line of work,” Olivia said. “And not that I’ve had more than an handful of lovers, but not all of them were men.”  
Suddenly, Astrid was very glad she hadn’t had more than half a beer to drink. She fought to rein in her emotions, desperate not to show her sudden surge of hope and desire.  
“Well,” she said. “How about drug-or-something-induced orgies in lesbian night clubs?”  
“True,” Olivia said. “That isn’t my kind of thing at all. I go for beds and intimacy.”  
“So how does it make you feel?”  
Olivia drained the last of her glass. She put it down again and looked thoughtful for so long that Astrid started thinking she wasn’t going to answer at all.  
“Actually it doesn’t bother me,” she eventually said. “Everybody in there was out of their skull. Nobody was looking at me.”  
“What about having sex with someone you hadn’t met before?”  
Olivia hesitated a moment before she spoke.  
“This may sound really shallow,” she said.  
“Ok,” Astrid said. “Impress me.”  
Olivia laughed.  
“It had been a long time since I got laid,” she said, “and she was really hot.”  
Astrid suddenly felt adrenaline rush into her blood, and realized to her surprise that she was jealous. She wanted Olivia to say that sort of thing about her, not some slut from the CIA. And intellectually she knew that that characterization of agent Walker was grossly unfair, but she couldn’t help thinking it. She wanted to see that smile on Olivia’s face, that slight blush on her cheeks and down her slender neck because she was thinking about Astrid, not agent Walker.  
“Astrid?”  
Olivia had been talking to her. She’d been to upset to hear what she said.  
“Sorry,” Astrid said. “I zoned out for a moment.”  
“You looked about ready to murder someone,” Olivia said. “What happened?”  
Without meaning to, Astrid looked away.  
“Hey,” Olivia said, her voice soft and comforting. “What’s wrong?”  
Astrid drew a breath and collected herself. She turned back to her friend. Coworker. Boss.  
“Nothing,” she lied. “I’m fine.”  
Olivia didn’t believe her for a moment. Astrid could tell from the evaluating look in her eyes.  
“Right,” Olivia said. “Where was I? Oh, right, fucking Sarah.”  
Astrid’s breath hitched. She couldn’t believe Olivia had just said that!  
“And it certainly wasn’t the first time she did it with another woman,” Olivia went on. “She did this thing where she’d first lick my nipple for a long while, then…”  
It took all the willpower Astrid had not to snap at her to stop, or simply run away. She’d promised that she’d listen, and she damn well would. Even if it broke her heart. Or at least forced her to put in for a transfer to Alaska.  
“Astrid?”  
She realized she’d zoned out again.  
“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what’s up with me.”  
“I have a theory,” Olivia said. “And I’d like to do a little experiment to see if I’m right.”  
“Um,” Astrid said. “Ok.”  
“It’s totally against FBI rules,” Olivia said.  
“Well,” Astrid said, confused. “We’ve never been sticklers for the rules, have we?”  
“True, I guess,” Olivia said. “It also might upset you.”  
“I’ll live,” Astrid said. “What is it you want to do?”  
“This,” Olivia said.  
And then she leaned forward across the table and placed a kiss on Astrid’s lips. It was a very light kiss. Just a few seconds of their lips gently touching. Of warm, soft flesh meeting hers. Of the smell of Olivia overwhelming her, and Olivia’s breath caressing her skin. Astrid’s mind went blank. All her powers of concentration focused on the sensations from the kiss.  
The kiss broke. Olivia’s presence went away. Astrid had to blink several times before she could see clearly again, and apparently her brain had broken, because all she could think was Olivia kissed me.  
“How long?” she heard Olivia ask.  
She focused. Olivia was looking at her with an odd expression.  
“How long what?” Astrid said.  
“How long have you felt this way about me?”  
“I don’t know,” Astrid said. “It kind of snuck up on me. Until just now, it was just this crush I was having on my straight friend. You must’ve had that at some time too.”  
Olivia looked worried, but nodded.  
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I made things more complicated.”  
“I’ll deal,” Astrid said. “And if I don’t, I’m sure the FBI could use an agent in Anchorage.”  
“I’m sure they could,” Olivia said. “But I really hope you’ll be able to stay.”  
Astrid sighed and smiled, a little bit sadly.  
“I want another beer,” she said.  
“I’ll get it,” Olivia said.  
She got up and headed for the bar before Astrid had a chance to protest. Astrid looked at her walk. She really was gorgeous. And smart. And nice. With a sinking feeling, Astrid realized that she probably wouldn’t be able to be around her without driving herself into depression and misery.  
“I was thinking,” Olivia said when she came back.  
She was carrying a tray, with six glasses of beer and six small glasses of dark amber liquid. Astrid stared.  
“Oh, right,” Olivia said when she noticed where Astrid was looking. “I thought I’d save some walking.”  
“You’re not planning to go back to the lab today?” Astrid asked.  
“No,” Olivia said. “And if you don’t help me drink all this, I won’t be in shape to come in tomorrow morning either.”  
“Can’t have that,” Astrid said and took one of each kind of glass. The smaller one smelled like scotch.  
“As I was saying,” Olivia said. “If we’re not out saving the universe on Friday, I know this nice little Italian restaurant, and there is a play running in a theater nearby that’s supposed to be good.”  
Astrid stared at her.  
“Are you asking me out on a date?” she said.  
Olivia smiled.  
“Yeah,” she said. “I am.”  
“One condition,” Astrid said.  
“Ok,” Olivia said. “Let’s hear it.”  
“I want another kiss. Right now and right here.”  
“I believe that can be arranged,” Olivia said.  
She got up from her seat and moved over to the seat next to Astrid. They put their arms around each other and kissed, deeply and for a long time. And even though it tasted of beer and scotch, it was very much better than their first.

Bo woke up slowly. She drifted gradually from a deep, dark place to being conscious of lying in a bed. It was warm and comfortable, and for some time she just lay there, her mind still and serene. But eventually thoughts appeared, and she started wondering where she was. She couldn’t remember lying down in a bed. In fact, the last thing she did remember was going into a club with Kenzi and someone else, and even that was very fuzzy. She opened her eyes.  
It turned out she was in her own bed, in her own bedroom. Light snuck in past the boards that haphazardly covered the windows, indicating that it was fairly late morning. Her back ached as if she’d been lying down for a long time, and when she forced herself into a sitting position all sorts of muscles and joints in her body complained. She groaned and shook her head to clear the last sleepy fog from it.  
When she opened her eyes again she saw that someone was sleeping in her stuffed chair. And not just any someone, but Lauren.  
There was a sudden stab of pain and disappointment in her heart.  The first human she’d ever made love to who’d still been alive afterwards. The first human she’d dared let herself have feelings for since her first boyfriend. And it had turned out the doctor had only done it because her Fae master wanted Bo distracted for a while.  
Bo felt her expression harden. She didn’t want Lauren there, but she was a doctor to the Fae and it was obvious that something had been – or was! – wrong with Bo. So she’d let her explain, and politely ask her to leave. She leaned back on her pillows and waited for the doctor to wake up.

It took some time, but eventually Lauren did. She woke with a start that nearly had her fall out of the chair. Once she’d caught herself, she draw a long, groaning breath and started to get up. It was a few seconds before she noticed that Bo was awake and watching her.  
“Good morning,” Bo said.  
“Oh,” Lauren said. “Hi. I didn’t know you were awake.”  
Bo was about to say something harsh, but the words fizzled out when she looked at Lauren. She looked, frankly, like crap. She was paler than usual. There were dark circles around her eyes. Her hair looked listless, apart from being mussed up from sleeping in a strange position. And Bo wasn’t sure, but she got the impression that the doctor had lost weight since she last saw her.  
“I woke up a little while ago,” she said. “I guess I’ve been ill?”  
Lauren nodded.  
“A Fae disease,” she said. “Wild Flu. Most get it as children. It gets bad when grown Fae get it.”  
Bo was taken aback. So she had been seriously ill? That explained both why Lauren was there at all and why Bo’s back felt like she’d been in bed for days.  
“What day is it?” she asked.  
“Monday,” Lauren said.  
Bo frowned. It had been Saturday when she and Kenzi went out.  
“So I’ve been sleeping for two days?”  
Lauren shook her head.  
“Nine,” she said.  
Bo stared. More than a week?!  
Lauren sighed.  
“Your powers went berserk,” she said. “I had to keep you sedated or you would’ve killed everyone around you.”  
“Oh,” Bo said. “Did I… hurt anyone?”  
“The girl you and Kenzi brought to the club died,” Lauren said. “But it turned out she was a CIA agent trying to infiltrate the Fae world, so that actually earned you Brownie points with the Elders. Everyone else is fine.”  
“Oh,” Bo said again. She was much to experienced to be upset at the thought of having killed someone, but not even remembering doing it felt weird.  
“I should be going,” Lauren said. “You should be fine. You’ll probably feel weak for a few days, and it’d be a good idea for you to feed in the next day or so.”  
Feeding. Things suddenly clicked together in Bo’s mind.  
“Wait!” she said as Lauren headed for the door.  
“Please,” she added.  
Lauren stopped, her hand on the doorknob, and turned back to Bo.  
“Nine days,” Bo said. “Normally, I’d feed two or three times in that time.”  
Lauren didn’t respond to the unspoken question.  
“Was it a lot of work, taking care of me?” Bo asked.  
Lauren shook her head.  
“A shot every six hours or so. Some cleaning and such. Keeping you hydrated. Kenzi helped.”  
A strange mixture of hope and dread welled up inside Bo.  
“Lauren,” she said. “How did I feed while I was sedated?”  
Lauren’s face grew tense. She didn’t answer.  
“I fed on you, didn’t I?” Bo said. “That’s why you look like you’re about to drop dead from exhaustion.”  
Lauren nodded.  
“Kenzi tried to help,” she said. “But for some reason it didn’t work when she tried.”  
The swell of emotion inside Bo turned into wild turmoil.  
“I think,” she said, “I know why.”  
“Oh?” Lauren said.  
“She doesn’t love me. At least not more than as a friend.”  
Lauren didn’t say anything. She remained where she was, her hand still on the doorknob.  
“It’s how I feed, you know?” Bo said. “I make people love me, and the love makes them open up so I can drain their life force.”  
“I know that,” Lauren said. “I helped you learn to stop draining someone before they die, remember?”  
Her voice was trembling.  
“I can make someone love me, and not drain them,” Bo said. “I use that all the time to convince people to do things for me.”  
Lauren nodded. She had closed her eyes.  
“Yes,” she said. “I know.”  
“And I can feed off someone without making them love me,” Bo said. “If they already do.”  
She paused for a breath or two.  
“Lauren,” she said. “I can’t make someone love me when I’m unconscious.”  
“Well,” Lauren said, “that’s interesting.”  
It sounded like she was just barely in control of her voice.  
“What you did… before,” Bo said. “It wasn’t just because the Ash told you, was it?”  
“Of course it wasn’t! How could you even think that!”  
She didn’t have an explanation, and for the moment she wasn’t interested in figuring one out.  
“You love me,” she said. “You really do.”  
Lauren turned around.  
“Yes, I do!” she said.  
There were tears in her eyes. She looked half angry, half afraid. The sight cut into Bo’s heart like a scalpel. She threw her blankets aside and got out of the bed, intending to… she wasn’t sure what. Just hold Lauren. Comfort her somehow.  
Unfortunately, her legs didn’t cooperate. In the bed, she’d felt better than she turned out to be. When she tried to take a step, her knee just bent and she collapsed into an untidy heap on the floor.  
“Bo!” Lauren yelled.  
She ran the few steps to the bedside and knelt, taking hold of Bo’s arms.  
“I’m fine,” Bo said. “Nothing hurt but my pride.”  
She put a hand on Lauren’s shoulder to steady herself. And, if she was honest to herself, to touch Lauren. Who didn’t seem about to let go of Bo’s arms either. To her surprise, Bo realized there were tears running down her own face as well.  
“Fuck,” she said. “I guess I’m a lot weaker than I thought.”  
There was Lauren under her hand. Warm, alive Lauren.  
“Take it easy,” Lauren said, her voice suddenly a lot more calm and professional. “Let’s get you back into bed.”  
“Stay here,” Bo said. “Please. Don’t go.”  
The thought of Lauren leaving was suddenly unbearable. Her emotions were still a chaotic mess, but that much was blazingly clear to Bo. She no longer had any doubts that the blonde doctor loved her, really loved her, and she wanted to be near her.  
“Ok,” Lauren said. “I’m here. I’ll stay.”  
Clumsily, without letting go of each other, they made their way onto the bed. Bo returned to sitting leaning against a bunch of pillows, Lauren kept a little bit of distance and sat on the bed’s edge. Bo held onto Lauren’s hand, which was holding hers just as firmly.  
“Don’t you have a job to be at?” Bo said after they’d just sat looking at each other in silence for a while.  
“I got permission to take care of you,” she said. “For as long as it takes.”  
“That’s generous.”  
“No,” Lauren said. “It’s that a succubus without control of her powers is very dangerous.”  
“Huh,” Bo said. “Fancy that. So you could stay for a while?”  
Lauren smiled. A rather wan smile, but still a smile.  
“Yes,” she said. “Although I would like to get a shower and a change of clothes soonish.”  
Bo took her free hand and brushed a stray lock of hair away from Lauren’s eyes.  
“Actually, you look like what you need most is more sleep,” she said. “Sleep and food.”  
“You maybe be right,” Lauren admitted. “That chair isn’t much of a bed.”  
Bo scooted to the side, leaving a couple of pillows behind. She patted the newly made space.  
“Here,” she said. “Sleep. I’ll ask Kenzi to order a pizza when you wake up.”  
Lauren lay down next to the still sitting Bo. She put one arm across Bo’s thighs.  
“Is that OK?” she asked.  
“Very,” Bo said. “Sleep now. Talk later.”  
It didn’t take long before Lauren’s breath grew slow and regular. Bo sat there, very gently stroking her golden hair. Her back was still all stiff, and she too could do with a shower. But that could wait. At the moment, she was happy where she was.  
Sitting next to someone she loved, and who loved her back, all by herself.

Kenzi carefully stalked up to the door to Bo’s bedroom. She’d heard voices talking earlier, and Lauren had left yet. This was promising. She laid her ear to the door and listened.  
Silence.  
Very slowly and carefully she turned the doorknob, and even more carefully she pushed the door open. Not very far, just a handspan. Then she listened again. It was hard to tell, but she thought she heard slow, regular breathing.  
She pushed the door open a little farther, taking care to stop before she got to the place where the hinges squeaked. As soon as she could fit, she stuck her head in.  
Bo and Lauren were in the bed together. Lauren was lying down with her arm over Bo’s legs, and Bo had fallen asleep sitting up with her arm around Lauren’s head. Both of them were fully dressed and looked fairly bedraggled.  
Just as carefully as she’d opened the door, Kenzi closed it again. She listened again after she was done, and could hear no sign that she’d woken either of them up. She stalked away, down the stairs and into the kitchen. It wasn’t until then, when she was safely out of earshot, that she let herself go.  
She punched the air with her fist, and very, very softly and quietly shouted.  
“Yes!”


End file.
